Breakaway Books

Authored by Rebecca Kennedy; Published July 2024; Fantasy, Romance

⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

I haven’t read a romantasy novel before that came off quite so much as fan fiction as this one—even Twilight. But, the best way I can describe Beautiful Villain is as The Great Gatsby fan fiction.

Beautiful Villain follows the same outlines as The Great Gatsby for the first half of the plot, merely transplanted into the twenty-first century. However, when Gatsby is shot, the similarities between the two novels end. It is revealed that he is a vampire, and while this guarantees his survival—as he is nearly immortal—it presents Daisy with new choices. Can she pursue a relationship with a vampire? Should she consider becoming one herself? In this rendition of the story, she’s a recent college grad who hasn’t yet found her passion, and Gatsby’s vampire community presents an attractive option for her life. But the community is soon endangered by one of the very first humans to be turned into a vampire, who cannot abide with Gatsby’s style of vampirism and comes to violently bring down his empire. 

I really struggled with the characters’ behavior in this novel, and most of my gripes come down to the narrator, Daisy. I appreciate that the author made an effort to give Daisy more autonomy and independence than 1920s Daisy had, but ultimately, it still felt like she was defined by her relationship to men rather than anything innate to herself. It was maddening to hear her falling all over herself over Gatsby’s heroism, especially considering the morally gray acts he committed. Inviting unsuspecting humans to his house to drug them and serve them up to vampires? Turning her friend into a vampire supposedly out of love for Daisy, but without informing her? In her shoes, I would have found him a little more difficult to love, in spite of their childhood romantic attachment. What I found truly baffling was just how easily Daisy accepted that Gatsby and many of his friends were vampires. There seemed to be only a few hours of concern before she fully embraced the concept and decided she wanted to become one herself, with no concerns about a wildly under-tested medical procedure. It struck me as strangely divorced from reality, and not in the fun way that most romantasy is.

The concept behind how Gatsby became a vampire is an interesting element to the story, and I like the idea that the procedure, a scientific and medical solution for disease, is transformed by its first patients into a religious rite. The divide between the first to undergo the procedure and the subsequent patients, who treat the procedure much more matter of factly, is one of the more compelling aspects to the narrative, but I wish the author had spent more time with it, struggling with the tension between the two very different philosophies of vampirism. Similarly, Daisy’s supernatural power—a weakened form of voice control, which has a magnified impact on vampires—is a good concept that doesn’t get enough time or energy spent on it, constantly pushed aside for Gatsby’s needs.

Beautiful Villain was a miss for me. If you adore The Great Gatsby, I suspect you’ll feel the same.