Urrrrrgh. I read this via Dracula Daily, which reorganised the text into daily emails of the journal entries as they occurred in real time (May to Nov), so perhaps my view of the story is coloured by that. But my gosh this was a dull read.

It did show promise at the start, and I was intrigued and somewhat excited to be finally reading one of the most famous vampire stories of note, but as time moved forward, it got less and less interesting and more and more of a chore to get through.

Dear friends, this book, this book right here, is a great example of why some people don't like reading classics. Perhaps in its day (1897) it was considered well written and fraught with terror, but reading it today in 2022, it a slog and honestly, not worth your time.

Really long journal entries (which were doubly long in the format Dracula Daily was using) where nothing of note happened, men (of the time of course) being overbearing about their women folk, the women being the perfect example of why some men think women are emotional creatures who need to be sheltered. Dracula himself, barely makes an appearance in the entire novel. It is centred wholly around Mina and the men who apparently loved her so much that they "did dare much for her sake." Ugh.

I was very tempted to DNF this when it got mid way through the October chapters. But I persisted, even when my eyes started glazing over from boredom, because this is a beloved classic. It had to get better right? almost half a million people rated this 5 stars, so there must be something that redeems it, right? Right???

But, no. There was nothing. I'm giving it 1 star because of the all the vampire works it somehow inspired, and an additional 1 star out of 5 for the story itself because all this book did was convince me that Bram Stoker is an energy vampire because reading this book sucked the life right out me.