At first, I thought this was a YA Dracula spin-off - but that is not the case. It's an unofficial sequel, really, set just over a decade after the original novel. It follows many of the same characters from the previous book, namely Mina and Jonathan Harker, along with their son, Quincey. Despite being a modern publication, I found it to be really authentic in its historical tone - in fact, it reminded me a little of Lovecraft's writing.
I am definitely not going to attempt to outline the plot for two reasons: one, I just could not do it justice due to it being so intricate, and two, I wouldn't want to ruin it for any potential readers! What I will say is that Quincey's role turned out to be a bit different to how I expected, and the side-plot with Maurice Hallam and Gabriel Shone was surprisingly good (as well as important). There was a trip to the fabled castle of Count Dracula in Transylvania, and there were, of course, vampires. What more could you ask for?
I should probably also mention that it is not written as a book, but instead a collection of letters, transcripts and journal entries of various characters. This lent a very interesting view on things, with several different perspectives. There are a few notes added by Quincey, too, as he is compiling the documents.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The only reason I dropped half a star is that it was a little slow to get into in my opinion.

I made The Husband listen to Dracula with me in October. And we weren’t too happy with it. Although it has Great moments, they are lost between boredom and characters that make you puke in your mouth with their perfection. So obviously I made him listen to this ‘sequel’ as well! (I did receive an ecopy through Netgalley, but also picked up the audiobook).

And I have to say, I liked it. It definitely has its flaws; the concept was really far fetched and the characters are (still) idiots. But otherwise, Barnes has done a great job.

This does very much read like a sequel to the original. The writing style and atmosphere have been captured perfectly! But at the same time it is a lot more accessible to a modern audience. Although it is also a slow burn it feels like there is more action, the stakes are higher and the whole plot is ‘bigger’. The characters are given more depth. Quincy is the perfect amount of disturbing (think of the kids in The Haunting of Bly Manor). There is a gay ‘romance’, one of the characters is an alcoholic, another isn’t ready to become a mother and has massive mental struggles.

Barnes took on an ambitious job with this, and he absolutely nailed it. This won’t be for everyone. You definitely need to be in the mood for it, and you need to have read, and appreciated, the original. But if you do, and you want more… this book really does Stoker’s Dracula justice.

I did not enjoy this tale simply because the writing was not to my taste. A great premise, poorly executed.

I really enjoyed this continuation of Dracula, it was better than some I’ve read before. It was the perfect read for Halloween.

I received a digital arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dracula's Child by J.S. Barnes is this author's attempt to make a sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. It takes place roughly 12-13 years later and follows several characters over a period of several months. There are some returning characters from Stoker's tale, as well as many new faces. It's is also written in a very similar format to Stoker's book, known as an epistolary novel: a book written as a series of documents. In this case, the book contains diary entries, letters, telegrams, and newspaper articles in chronological order.

Two characters are the primary focus of the novel: Quincy Harker, the son of John and Mina Harker, and newcomer Gabriel Shone. We don't see these two characters' own thoughts in this book, save for the last two entries in the book, but through the accounts of other people. This is a good thing, however, as witnessing their side of things would've removed some of the mystery from the story.

The story begins with a meeting of the surviving members of the main group from Dracula, and the story officially takes off after Professor Abraham van Helsing suffers from what seems to be a heart attack and falls unconscious. The book takes it's time introducing the characters and building the plot. But once it does take off, it moves at a descent pace, becoming lightning fast by the climax. Speaking of the climax, don't expect an epic battle or you will be disappointed.

Most of the characters, the ones that matter, are fairly well developed. The more personal touch epistolary grants helps to develop the characters, and allows you to picture them with ease. I could grasp the scenes, personalities and settings with no trouble at all.

Though I've only read Dracula once so far, I can say with certainty that the author did a good job with mimicking the writing style of Bram Stoker. There are a few times where the illusion slips, but it is only for a brief moment and doesn't pull me out of the book too much. My primary reason for not rating this book higher than average is due to me not being fond of epistolary books, though I still enjoyed it. I can definitely see myself owning a copy and reading the book again in the future.

It is never easy to write a sequel to a classic novel but J.S. Barnes managed to pull it off. I actually managed to reread Dracula before I read Dracula's Child so it was interesting to be able to compare the original novel to the sequel written by a modern author.
Dracula's Child is written in much the same format as Dracula. The writing style is so similar to the orginal novel as is the way language is used.
It has the same dark, claustrophobic, and gothic feel to it which is impressive considering it was written 123 years later than the original classic.
I would recommend reading or rereading Dracula itself so you can understand the plot but this is really a fitting successor to Dracula.

Time has passed since Jonathan and Mina Harker have returned to England after their ordeal of killing Dracula in Transylvania. Quincey is given a small birthday party with the guests including Van Helsing. A tragedy with Van Helsing at the party cause Mina to worry about her son’s strangeness. Jonathan deals with it by drinking more And more while Mina starts writing in her diary.

The novel is told by diary entries, newspaper clippings, and letters. I felt as I read this book as if I was there experiencing what was happening. I felt that I understand Dracula better. I liked that experience. The novel has some twists and turns that I did not anticipate. The author has done an exquisite job of writing this novel. It is an excellent sequel to Dracula.

Thank you to Net Galley and Titan Books for sending me the ARC of this book for a review.

I want to start my review by saying that I love Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is one of my favorite books. I also love to read re-tellings, so when I saw Dracula's Child on NetGalley, I immediately asked for the ARC.

This book picks up thirteen years after the events of the original when life has returned to relative normalcy for those who fought against the darkness in Transylvania. All the old characters are here: Jonathan and Mina Harker, Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward, Van Helsing, and of course, the Count himself. And new to the cast: young Quincey Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina, whose twelfth birthday marks the beginning of this tale, and whose soul will hang in the balance soon afterward.

The book is filled with journal entries from most of the beloved vampire hunters (Mina and Jonathan Harker, Dr. Seward)--along with some new faces that move along the story of the evil Count and his doomed minions. Dracula's Child is filled with details that created the dark atmosphere Dracula fans should eat up.

Dracula's Child is the PERFECT sequel to the classic, it is written in the same style, and Barnes has used the same diction and writing style throughout, giving it the same feel as Stoker's novel. The characters are well done and feel like the originals without being flat.

All in all, I thought this was a phenomenal and unputdownable novel. Barnes has succeeded in creating an intense, troubling, and complex story just as dark and creepy as the original, and I thought that the blend of human horror and the human heart is expertly achieved.

If you’re a fan of Dracula, ‘Dracula's Child’ should be on your TBR.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the prose and style which immediately took me back twenty-five years to the first time I read Dracula. If you’re a fan of the original then you might enjoy this book for it’s faithfulness to that text in and of itself. Like Dracula, this is an epistolary novel and it’s through letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and other documents that the story is pieced together. Through that we get several POV characters, some of them very familiar and some of them new creations.

I have to say that for me the characters were one of the weak points. The style of writing felt very similar no matter who was penning the journal entry or article. I feel as if in some ways there was little to differentiate their voices other than their circumstances at any present time. The big exception being of Maurice Hallam, who always had his own flair and very much is own voice. The rest of the characters blended together so well that sometimes I didn’t realize whose journal it was or whose letter until some context was provided (I’ll admit I am not great at remembering the chapter headings which actually provides that information). But Mina felt much the same as Jonathan as Jack as Arthur Goldaming etc etc. But really all this is a fairly minor quibble because the prose was so very delicious so I overlooked this for the most part.

As for the plot, this is a sequel to the original and takes place about thirteen years after the ending of that novel. Our surviving characters have tried to move on with life while they are also all still very much in touch, having been united by those horrific events into life-long friends. Jonathan and Mina have a child, Quincey, who is quite precocious. Suddenly a tragic event occurs and then a series of other tragic events that become increasingly concerning. At first there doesn’t appear to be any connection between these things–and how could there be?–they are so far apart in nature. Over the course of the book more and more disturbing things occur until it becomes quite clear that there is a huge force at work steering all of these events towards a horrifying conclusion–Dracula is back. And he’s into politics now? Hahah. Just kidding. But not really, he kind of is. He wants revenge against everyone apparently. Everyone.

Everything here is beefed up. There are way more vampires, spreading like a virus, and way more violence and destruction, and Dracula’s ambitions have grown quite large. Honestly this part did seem a bit iffy to me, his master plan, because it was very odd and I’m not sure if it was in character for Dracula. That being said, I also felt certain parallels with some political leaders of today. I’m not sure if it’s the times seem like every wannabe dictator is a stand-in for Trump but it feels like it when I’m reading these things. He uses the news as propaganda. He gets the everyone distracted by the violence that he created to use it as an excuse to halt progress and go back to ‘the good old days’. Any of this sounding familiar? Hmmm. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but it does make one think!

Well, and there’s the end. I’m not going to spoil things but let’s just say that it leaves some possibilities on the table. 🙂 Overalll, I enjoyed this book even though the pace took a long while to build momentum, I had fun with it. Things really ramped up at the end and the plot wasn’t just a rehash from the original. There were great ambitions! And the prose and style were fantastic. I would have liked a little more from some of the characters, but that was a very minor thing for me. If you liked the original I say give this one a whirl. 4/5 stars.

A creepy cover, and a must for fans for Dracula.
In this we’re asked to imagine that Dracula didn’t die, and that he has spent years plotting his revenge and planning to take over the world. The moment I saw this on NetGalley I was hoping to be approved to read it.
Set years after the events of Dracula, we pick up with Mina and Jonathan Harker learning to enjoy life with their young child, Quincey. Events early on show that they are going to have a tough time, and we get many clues that Dracula has set events in place to culminate in his domination of England. Nobody is sure where or when the attack will happen, but it’s evident it will be fierce and something few are expected to survive.
The writing style is similar to Dracula, and the approach certainly encourages us to consider how to tackle such an obvious threat.
This would have been a 5 star read, but it took me SO LONG to get through this and to feel like I was getting anywhere. Part of the issue was with me, where I didn’t really get into it so dipped in and out while I read other things. I was expecting a lot, and this didn’t really live up to my expectations in the way I’d hoped. Once we shifted to part three I found myself more engrossed and keen to see how it developed, but it took far too long to create that feeling and this, for me, is a weakness.

The story is compelling, dark, and exuberant! Perfect choice for your spooky reads. I'll recommend this book to readers who love classical horror and gothic novels. The world-building and the characters' developments are just--chef kiss!

This story is like a slow cooker meal, it goes little by little until you taste it and 🤯. Surprisingly, it works very well and respects the original work.

I was given an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review courtesy of @titanbooks and @netgalley

This book is a spiritual successor to the original Dracula novel, going so far as to be written in the same style by telling the story through a series of diary entries, letters, and newspaper stories.

While the style is similar I found the story in this case to be too expansive. Bram Stoker only had a small amount of character journals as POVs, while Dracula’s Child has a seemingly endless number of POVs and it really muddled the plot and made the plot a challenge to understand.

I feel also that the story had some unnecessary characters and elements that caused the book to slow to almost a crawl in the middle act. The story found its ground in the end but it was a long time getting there.
I enjoyed the overall looming dread this novel achieves and the nods to the original Dracula scattered throughout.

My main problem with this book is that in the beginning it had a sort of feminist agenda with a few of strong female characters and showcasing the gender role disparities, but by 3/4ths through the book almost all of them were gone from the story or useless, leaving us with a bland guys club to save the day yet again.

This was a solid read if you’re a big fan of the original, but just not very memorable or interesting

A stunning literary offering. This book is, like the original 'Dracula', an epistolary novel, presented in the form of letters, articles, and journal entries. Also much like the original, it starts with an agonizing slowness and builds to a crashing crescendo of a climax.

This books picks up thirteen years after the events of the original, when life has returned to a relative normalcy for those who fought against the darkness in Transylvania. All the old characters are here: Jonathan and Mina Harker, Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward, Van Helsing, and of course, the Count himself:

"I begin to see the outline of a larger design. I can see the ways in which all of us have been hamstrung and distracted.... And what is emerging once more from the darkness, onto centre stage, while we five are all so ruinously debilitated? We know his name of course. We know it of old."

And new to the cast: young Quincey Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina, whose twelfth birthday marks the beginning of this tale, and whose soul will hang in the balance soon afterward.

The characters are all so beautifully, realistically flawed, that you can't help love and pity them, even as some of them do terrible things.

If you loved 'Dracula', you will love 'Dracula's Child'. You will feel yourself immersed in the story, the pain, the fear, the horror, and the mad struggle of good vs evil. You will race across England by foot, train, and car; you will, with mad fury, pound stakes into the hearts of the vicious undead; you will fight against the rising panic as all that you love is endangered.

I loved this book. The writing style was so utterly similar to that of Stoker himself that I wonder if perhaps old Bram was a vampire and has reemerged under the name JS Barnes.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Not my usual genre. I did enjoy it, but I don’t think it’s one I’ll be recommending to others, unless they’re fans of Stoker.

Dracula is an absolute classic, a staple of the horror genre, a key Gothic text. Even if you haven’t read the novel, you know the story, you know the characters, you’ve seen it played out so many times and read stories based off it, seen the effects Dracula has had on vampires in the 20th Century. So what more, you might ask, could be added to Dracula and the vampire mythos? How could a sequel be written to one of the foundational horror texts?

Well, if you are asking that, and if you are dubious of another tale revolving around Mina, Jonathan, Van Helsing and the rest of their small group, I promise – Dracula’s Child is a fantastic, excellent sequel, and one which takes some of the best elements for other reimagining’s, bounces off the original, and creates something refreshing yet familiar.

There are some elements in this book – outside the characters themselves – similar to the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the TV series Penny Dreadful, and the novel Anno Dracula. But Barnes absolutely makes these characters his own.

Years after defeating Dracula, Jonathan and Mina host an anniversary dinner with their friends, and celebrate their son Quincey’s birthday. But shadows draw around the group, and something strange is happening to the family and their friends. Meanwhile, two men on a tour of Europe encounter a strange woman in the forests of Romania.

Like the original Dracula, Dracula’s Child follows an epistolary format, presented as Quincey Harper putting together various journals, articles, letters and telegrams from the time. It works well, and really helps the Gothic feel to the novel, making it feel all the more like a continuation of the original.

The other plus side to the diary-entry format is how easily it is to get inside the heads of the characters, yet when they hold some information back it still feels realistic, giving the impression of people almost too scared to confront what is actually happening. I liked how Barnes also gave much more time to Mina, and it’s always great to see her in a more active role in any Dracula story.

This is a fantastic, solid read, and if you like the original classic, I have no doubt you’ll love dipping back into this world and reuniting with these characters. Barnes has done an amazing job.

Thank you to Titan for providing a copy of this book via NetGalley.

this was a great horror novel, I think it worked really well as a sequel to Dracula. The characters were great and I was caught in this world when reading.

I was so glad to see this book on NetGalley, I immediately asked an ARC and was really glad to receive it!
So glad because Dracula is one of my favorite books of all times and I love to read retellings like Anno Dracula or sequels like Dracula: The Undead! I can't wait to read Dracul!

So I entered this book open, excited and just wanting to get back to my favorite characters: Mina, Jack and, of course, Dracula!
I was not disappointed!

First, I loved the story within a story: Quincey is the editor of the book placed into the reader's hands, and he is not telling the story. J.S. Barnes decided to get back to Bram Stoker's format: diary entries, letters, memorandum, articles from newspapers, and so on! I really appreciated that! Moreover, I found the author's writing quite good! The way he structures his sentences is quite agreeable and matches with the period of the story, the beginning of the twentieth century!

Then, of course, I loved all the vampire aspect of this book! I loved that the characters don't dare to admit what they encountered and can't write the word in their papers. J.S. Barnes seems to have exacerbated the erotic side of the creature: some passages of this book would never have been written by Bram Stoker in the 1890s I think. It adds something more, but it didn't always feel necessary to me.
I loved how the story goes, the direction it takes, the twists and turns: it was quite gripping, even if it was also frustrating! Indeed, at some point, I didn't know what to expect anymore and the tension was building so much I was afraid it would collapsed badly.
I was not entirely wrong in that, but I'll get back to it later.

I also loved to, as I said earlier, get back to my favorite characters. From the first time I read Dracula, I fell in love with Mina. Because of the misogyny of the period, in the original book, she is considered "more than an ordinary woman", "a man in a female body", "strong and capable". She was, clearly, the cleverest character, meaning that she understood the Count's schemes and was ignored by her male companions ... because she was a woman! This time... well, she's still the cleverest, she still sees clear through the fog shrouding the characters, she is the one who understands. So, Mina is exactly as she were in the original book.
Jack Seward, the alienist: my favorite male character with Van Helsing! I thought he was less... arrogant, I'd say? In the original story, he realizes quickly that he doesn't understand vampirism and what is happening to people around him. In this book, I'll just say he is "off track": his storyline differs from his companions. I'll say no more, but I loved to follow him. Only regret: I would have loooooooved to learn more about something that "happens" to him!
Jonathan and Arthur are characters I like, but I'm not a huge fan of them. Jonathan, here, is still traumatised by his Transylvanian experience: he can't recover, and... well, let's say at some point, he feels like a coward. As for Arthur, maybe just like in Dracula, he feels a bit in the background, probably because he doesn't keep a diary? He feels less close to the reader, and so I got less pleasure in following him.
Other characters are present there, like Maurice Hallam, Quincey Harker, Gabriel Shone or Ileana; but I don't want to say too much, so I'll just let you discover them.

And now, to the only disappointing aspect of the book to me: the ending.
It felt way too quick for the amount of pages spent on building momentum! I was a bit like: "What?... All of this for just this?!" In seconds, everything is explained and resolved. I felt let down by this ending. And after that, the epilogue feels too long, anticlimactic - even if it is still interesting to know what happened to some of the surviving characters.
Moreover, there's one element that feels close to illogical to me, but I can't talk about it without spoiling it. Let's say I didn't expect that at all!
The only part I loved in this ending was when we get back to Quincey as the narrator!

So, I had a really good time, until the ending which wasn't as good as the building promised it to be! Still I recommand it!

(This review contains spoilers)

I’d like to thank Netgalley and Titan books for the advanced readers copy in exchange of an honest review.

This is the thing with spin-offs. You take a book that is a bestseller, a classic – master piece even and then attempt to build up on it. But this however, comes with the premise that the original classic already has a mass of readers who are very devoted to the original source work and the challenge here, therefore, is two fold –

1) Doing justice to the classice, and,
2) Convincing your readers to like what you have done with the spin-off

Unfortunately for me, this book just did not do it. At several points in the book, I felt as though it is based on the same premise as The Cursed Child.

The atmosphere that Bram Stoker creates in Dracula, doesn’t happen here, even though the book is written in the same style. That deep unsettled feeling just doesn’t rise in your chest. While Bram Stoker creates a terrifying world, this book kept getting absurd in its attempts to create the same atmosphere, at one point culminating into a full blown war between the undead and the living!

If you are a Dracula fan, and revere Bram Stoker’s work, read this one with a pinch of salt.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of my favourite books and as far as I’m concerned one of the best horror novels ever written. I was really looking forward to reading this sequel set about fifteen years after The Harker’s and co despatch the Count. I really loved this. The book is made up of a series of journal entries, memos, notes, letters and newspaper articles from different characters detailing the sinister events that plague London and wider England when Van Helsing becomes suddenly ill and slips into a coma. I love this structure. The story is drip-fed in small chunks and you need to keep reading to find out where and how it all connects. I thought this was a terrific read. I can’t wait to read more by the author.