Quite often in fiction, the figure of the vampire has represented loneliness; readers are very accustomed to the particular kind of yearning that immortality and blood thirst can bring. We’ve seen it in the work of Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer and many more, but we’ve arguably never seen that sense of yearning quite the way Rachel Koller Croft portrays it in her new novel, We Love the Nightlife.
In Croft’s follow-up to her debut, the thriller Stone Cold Fox, the vampires of Nightlife are draped in yearning even as their never-ending revels mask what they really want. Croft’s protagonist, Amber, is frozen in her party girl prime, turned in the waning days of the 1970s by her maker, the beautiful and manipulative Nicola. Decades later, despite the comfortable life they share in a Victorian mansion, and Nicola’s ambition to open a new nightclub to be their personal playground, the old ways of doing things start to chafe at Amber. She begins to imagine what life might be like without Nicola, and considers what an escape plan might look like. But Nicola’s influence is powerful, her ambitions are vast and her appetite for control deeper than Amber ever imagined.
When we meet her, Amber is not physically alone, but she is lonely, trapped in a domineering friendship she’d rather leave, desperate for a way to change her circumstances and yearning for a different life. It’s a place most of us have been at some point or another, and despite her vampiric nature, Amber feels like one of us. This is mainly due to Croft’s skill; her conversational, warm and relatable prose depicts Amber not as a lonely monster, but as a person longing for freedom in a savage world covered in glitter and awash with pulsing music.
The real magic trick of the novel, though, is how Croft fleshes out the world beyond Amber’s view. Nicola’s perspective is also laced throughout the narrative, from her childhood more than a century earlier to her very particular desires in the present day. We get to see not just Nicola’s side of the story, but her own brand of yearning, giving the book an antagonist who’s not just remarkably well-developed, but human in her own twisted way. These dueling perspectives, coupled with memorable side characters and a beautifully paced plot, make We Love the Nightlife an engrossing, darkly funny, twisted breakup story that’s perfect for vampire fiction fans and fans of relationship drama alike.