BLOODSTAINS BY GASLIGHT

In Lagoe’s horror novel, when a teenage girl’s controlling boyfriend becomes a vampire, she must figure out how to escape him.

It’s 1997, and Reese Perkins, a high school senior in snowy upstate New York, wants to break things off with her possessive boyfriend, Michael. When she decides to work on a school project at a boy named Sebastian Belinski’s house, Michael loses control, recklessly driving in a rage and hitting a hooded figure on the road. This figure is Trevor, a vampire trying hard to survive on animal blood, but after the car accident, he can’t help himself and bites Michael, turning him into one of the undead. Trevor tries to explain Michael’s new circumstances (he’s now a vampire who must live in secret), but Michael begins acting manic and his eyes go pitch black, spooking Reese and his own mother. When Michael drains and turns the local pastor into a vampire, and later targets Reese’s crush, Sebastian, Trevor calls on a network of vampires from Syracuse to help get the situation under control. Meanwhile, Reese must figure out what to do when her emotionally manipulative ex wants to live forever—with her by his side. The seemingly romantic line “I don’t ever want to spend a day without you by my side” becomes, in the context of this novel, utterly chilling. With clean prose, Lagoe deftly balances a creepy story with a more realistic exploration of how victims of manipulation and domestic abuse often find themselves in situations in which they cannot leave their abuser. Reese’s struggles are especially well drawn and compelling, though the novel occasionally becomes graphic and upsetting to the point of shocking excess. A few plot beats seem underdeveloped; Trevor’s flight from Syracuse, for example, could have been fleshed out more to provide necessary characterization. Still, this unsettling thriller about physical and emotional abuse has sharp teeth.

A spooky—if occasionally over-the-top—skewering of vampires and toxic manipulators.