Blurb:
| You can’t kill someone already dead. That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark? Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for. Simone is reckless and impulsive—which would’ve been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggle to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder if is she truly free or if has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another. As bodies pile up in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia’s relationship is stretched to its breaking point... |
American Ghoul is a unique historical novel with dark
humor sprinkled throughout about a free Black woman, her white vampire
companion, and all the trouble they get into. Lavinia, the forementioned free
woman, hardly feels free after being released from her enslavement after the
Civil War. With limited options and too afraid to leave the only home she’s ever
known, Lavinia stays at the plantation where she was enslaved, helping her
former mistress, Miss Tillie, run it as a brothel. It’s unpleasant work, but
Lavina doesn’t dare hope for something better. That is, until she meets a
strange white girl named Simone whom she rescues from burning up in the sun. Later
she finds Simone drinking the blood of one of the brothel regulars.
Lavinia is an interesting character, as she’s an unlikeable
victim who defies the mistaken belief that a victim must also be a good person.
What happened to her both during and after her enslavement is horrific, and
she’s certainly sympathetic, but Lavinia also does terrible things without
feeling particularly guilty about it. She justifies what she does by saying she
never killed anyone herself: she just helped Simone do it (which is hardly
better). Personally, I love that she’s such a complicated character and gets to
be an anti-villain. It’s clear she doesn’t think what she’s doing is that bad, as
Lavinia does try to choose immoral people for her vampire friend to bleed dry. But
other times, she just picks victims who have things she needs, like a new pair
of boots. Lavinia is brave, no-nonsense, and blunt, and doesn’t have a lot of
patience for Simone’s nonsense. While Simone is well-educated, Lavinia is
clearly the smarter and more practical of the two, and it’s a miracle Simone
even managed to survive a year on her own.
With the exception of Lavinia’s love interest, King, and a
little girl that Simone murders, very few of the characters are fully good or
bad. Take Miss Tillie, Lavinia’s former mistress, for example. She never beat
Lavinia, gave her a new dress for Christmas, and speaks to her rather than at
her, which causes Lavinia a small pang of guilt when Simone kills her. But
while Miss Tillie is a far cry from Simon Legree, she was still complicit in
the enslavement other human beings, an unforgiveable sin definitely worthy of
making her a vampire’s dinner.
Simone is similar in that she’s not a good person and thinks
that helping Lavinia makes up for the fact that she’s also controlling and
doesn’t seem to care about anyone but herself (although she claims to love
Lavinia). While you can’t help but feel bad for Simone for being turned into a
monster against her will, it doesn’t justify the way she treats Lavinia. She
wants her friend all to herself, gets extremely jealous if Lavinia spends time
with anyone else, and will read her mind without consent to figure out what
she’s been doing and where she’s been. Their relationship is toxic at best, and
abusive at worst. With Simone’s possessiveness and their shared mental link,
Lavinia eventually realizes their connection is almost as bad as the one that
tethered her to Miss Tillie.
And of course, there’s the fact a vampire will kill anyone,
even children, for food, especially if she’s hungry. Simone’s recklessness when
it comes to food often leaves a mess for Lavinia to clean up and gets them both
in trouble on numerous occasions. Simone is a spoiled white girl who claims
she’s less racist than other white people, but as we learn more about her past
it’s revealed that she’s not the white savior she claims to be. This is hinted
at early on when Simone refers to Lavinia as her “chocolate savior” (ew), is
completely unaware of how dangerous it is to be a Black woman walking around a
white town on her own, and laughs when Lavinia doesn’t know how to read a
globe. Because Simone also had a troubled past, she thinks she and Lavinia are
similar, not realizing her white girl problems are nothing compared to being
enslaved. Sometimes it feels like Lavinia is sacrificing everything for a white
woman because of some misplaced sense of loyalty.
While the two women make their way to Chicago (a popular destination for formerly enslaved people) Lavinia meets a Romanian couple named Valerica and Victor Radut who own a store where she sells the belongings of Simone’s victims. The couple recognize Simone as a vampire immediately, and believe Lavinia can protect them from her, since Simone (sort of) does what she says. They believe that in order to kill a vampire you must cut off the head, burn the heart, then drink the ashes for protection (like they did to the body of poor Mercy Brown in 1892). Despite claiming Valerica as a friend, Lavinia is ultimately unmoved by the unfortunate fate that befalls the Raduts because, as she puts it, “Simone was my priority. Maybe the only friend I needed.” Other people who make the mistake of getting close to Lavinia suffer similar fates. It’s hard to decide whether you want the them to face justice or not, or if you want them to get away with all the horrible things they’ve done.
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