A city ruled by vampires. A disgraced princess. A world underground.
Charlotte Travesty lives in a world of comfort. Glittering nightclubs, a lavish mansion, and a staff of humans at her beck and call. Being a royal vampire means her future is secured—all she has to do is get through the Awakening, an ancient ceremony every vampire experiences when they come of age.
But when her Awakening arrives at last, everything changes in one terrifying instant.
Cast from her home and rejected by the royal family, Charlie is forced into a life of fear and brutality. Where creatures called weepers live below the city, kept at bay by an unlucky sector of fighters enslaved by the very king who cast her out. Charlie now finds herself among the ranks.
She soon learns that weepers aren’t all she needs to fear in her new life. Other workers are dying in the tunnels below ground. Charlie knows that if she’s going to survive, she must form alliances with the very humans that despise her. But will she win their trust in time? Or will she die in the very darkness she was born to rule?
For fans of Sarah J. Maas’s Crescent City trilogy and Charlaine Harris’s True Blood series, A Whisper in the Dark is the first volume in the Charlie Travesty serial.
My Review
I cannot say how excited I was for the return of vampires in A Whisper in the Dark. And they did not disappoint. Charlie is such a cool character and is the most relatable vampire I’ve ever read (she’s not a ball of angst like certain sparkly vampires and not a raging bitch like some doppelgängers—although those are both guilty pleasures on their own).
One of my biggest pet peeves in stories is when there is one star and everyone else feels like cardboard cutouts to make the main character stand out more. Thankfully, the secondary and tertiary characters are also incredibly unique and make the world feel real. I could easily picture all of them and felt like I was right there with them.
Beyond the characters, the world-building drew me in from page one and the story goes full throttle, making the most of the short length of a serial. I want to know more about how the king rules his kingdom and the new struggles the disowned Charlie Travesty has to face.
The moment I finished the book, I immediately wanted the next installment: A Light in the Dark (Goodreads | Amazon). And that is the best marker by which I can review this book.
I give it 5 bloody stars.
Thank you so much for this review, Zara! You’re the sweetest and it’s so exciting to hear that you enjoyed the first volume <3
Of course! It was my pleasure to read a book written by you and Jessi (I’ve read all her books, now I need to read yours LOL). And once I knew it was about vampires, I was absolutely sold.