‘We’re All Monsters Here’ was a fast, fun, sometimes gory, often amusing and surprisingly romantic vampire story. I finished it with a satisfied smile on my face and the hope that there’s more to come.

The story is told from the point of view of Anna, a five-centuries-old vampire who has a plan to wipe out the morally repulsive board of a fossil fuel company during a weekend retreat at an isolated country house. 

I loved the tone of Anna’s thoughts. She’s self-confident without deluding herself into thinking she’s invulnerable. She’s genuinely disgusted by the board members she intends to drain but is honest enough with herself to admit that she’ll enjoy feasting on them and that she’s also going to kill the staff running the country house, although they’ve done nothing wrong because letting them live would be dumb and anyway, she’s hungry.

I liked that Anna had a plan but knew that the plan would almost certainly have to change and she was ready to roll with that. 

What Anna wasn’t ready for was the deep mutual attraction between her and Saira, a secretary working through the weekend to service the workaholic needs of the Chairman of the Board. 

It turned out that that was only one of several things that Anna wasn’t ready for. I spent that last third of the book enjoying the tension of not knowing what would happen next or how Anna would deal with it. 

I loved the action scenes in the book. They’re vivid and bloody and exciting without losing Anna’s sense of fun or her mild amusement at the mess she’d let herself get into.

The scene where Anna and Saira finally enjoy each other is one of the best-written sex scenes I’ve read in a while. It was cliché-free, doesn’t shy away from the physical details but doesn’t try to turn them into erotica for the reader either. Instead, the scene does a great job of capturing the feeling of two strong characters discovering each other with a wonderful mix of curiosity, surprise, lust, and aggression that ends, eventually, not just in mutual exhaustion but in a change in the relationship between the two women. 

The pacing kept the book moving forward relentlessly without feeling rushed and the plot packed a few surprises but what I enjoyed most was simply watching Anna dealing with the unexpected and learning more about herself as she did so. Anna is a scary, inhuman, dangerous but surprisingly likeable vampire who I hope to have the opportunity to see in action again soon.