Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco
Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe’s best schools of forensic medicine… and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend. But her life’s dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school’s forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.
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These books must have some sort of drug in them. I cannot stop devouring this series. I had to force myself onto a book buying ban so that I’d read some of my library audiobooks that are waiting on hold for me instead of continuing to absolutely binge this series. I don’t know if it’s the completely badass female heroine or the extremely sarcastic love interest… or maybe all the dead bodies, but this story just keeps getting better and better. Audrey Rose and Thomas Cresswell are two characters I don’t think I could ever get sick of reading about.
This book, the second in a series, follows life after Jack the Ripper, who committed murders so gruesome, even immovable Audrey Rose could hardly stomach it. She needed a break and an escape from London so she attends a forensic school that uses one of Dracula’s old castles as its home base. What better way to study the dead? It made such a perfect eerie atmosphere for the events that unfold with some surprising and ingenious twists along the way. I loved the Jack the Ripper retelling but getting into the mythological vs. actual human murderer aspect of this second book was so intriguing. I had no idea whether we’d be delving into fantasy or staying firmly in the “real” world.
There was great banter in this book and a few new characters introduced that I couldn’t help but be intrigued by…. and suspicious of. I also like how this book, while still being exciting and adventurous, still dealt with the traumatic backlash of the events of the first book. Audrey Rose definitely has some PTSD after the Ripper case and going through similar events (a mysterious serial killer leaving a pile of bodies in their wake) in this book we were able to see how hard it was for her to just “move on” and slowly deal with the trauma she faced while presently facing a new one. And it wasn’t just a quick fix either, her past is something that might always affect her forensic work and be something she has to deal with every day and having that very transparent mental health representation was very realistic.
Although this book, and I’m sure the rest in the series will, have very similar plot-lines as the first book: go to a place, find victims, catch the killer etc etc; there were some great differences that made it easy to devour. The first book focused on a specific time period when a well-known serial killer (who was never caught) stalked the streets of White Chapel, this book, however, focuses on ancient legends of a killer from long, long ago and so it creates this whole mystery around how can these same murders be happening so many centuries later? This book also focused a lot more on characterization as opposed to the last book. We got a deeper look into our main character’s vulnerabilities as well as a deeper look into Thomas as a character who isn’t JUST the love interest or JUST the sarcastic “sidekick”. We really got somewhere with these two that I think opened the door for serious relationship growth in the next book.
4 stars on this one and I’m excited to continue devouring this series. I’ve heard from many that the third book is the best in the series so I can’t wait to read further. Again, I highly recommend if you like a darker tone to your YA novels or are at all interested in historical fiction and/or true crime.