The Book of Blood and Roses Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Updated on October 5, 2026

Verdict: A vampire-academy romantasy with a genuinely charged hunter-and-vampire pairing and a well-loved audiobook, let down by a rushed final act and plot turns that arrive a little too conveniently.

Best for: Readers who want a sapphic vampire romance with real danger between the leads and a moody Highland campus, and who can forgive a fast-tracked romance and a book-one ending that leaves threads hanging.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door, per romance.io)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5 — a 3.90 Goodreads average across 4,837 ratings, with diffuse but recurring complaints about the ending and plot logic)

Tropes: Vampire hunter and vampire, enemies-to-lovers, forbidden love, roommates and forced proximity, accidental magical bond, dark academia, secret mission, found family, gothic Scottish setting.

The Book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee is the debut novel and first book of The Callisto Chronicles, a traditionally published adult sapphic paranormal romance from Del Rey, set at a university outside Inverness where vampires and humans study side by side — and where Rebecca Charity, a hunter sent undercover to steal a legendary book, finds herself bound to the vampire heiress she is meant to despise.

Nine months after its January 2026 release it holds a 3.90 average across 4,837 Goodreads ratings and 3.9 on StoryGraph, where 931 readers have written reviews and only 5% marked it did-not-finish. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, and rights sold in the UK, Germany and Italy before publication. Under that steady average sits a quieter split: readers who came for the chemistry and the lore are happy, and readers who came for a tightly plotted fantasy keep finding the seams. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is The Book of Blood and Roses About?

This is a romantasy in the most literal sense: a romance carried by a fantasy plot, and a vampire book that wants the gothic trappings — the blood, the old families, the castle-adjacent campus — without the centuries-long brooding. The supernatural boarding-school setup puts it next to sapphic college romance as much as next to vampire fiction, and the Scottish Highlands setting does a lot of atmospheric work. Publishers Weekly singled the worldbuilding out as the book’s best feature, praising how it pushes the supernatural-school template somewhere new.

Rebecca starts the book defined by what she has lost. Her parents were killed by vampires, and the shadowy hunting organisation Callisto has given her a purpose and a target in exchange. Aliz Astra starts it defined by what she has — the name, the power and the protection of one of Europe’s most powerful vampire families. The question underneath the romance is whose version of the vampire world is true, and Rebecca’s training turns out to be the less reliable source.

What Makes This Sapphic Vampire Romantasy Work

The pairing: The hunter-and-vampire setup is the reason most readers picked it up, and the chemistry is the most praised element in the reviews I read. Readers keep saying the two have energy from their first scene together, which is the hardest part of enemies-to-lovers to fake.
The world and its lore: Readers describe being immersed in the university and the vampire politics, and several appreciate that the vampire rules depart from the usual template. Publishers Weekly made the same call.
Women allowed to be flawed: A recurring compliment is that both leads are imperfect, stubborn and sometimes unlikeable, and that the book lets them be.
Queer characters without a coming-out arc: Readers note with relief that the leads are already comfortable with who they are, so the conflict is about loyalty and species, not sexuality.
The audiobook: Katie Leung’s narration is praised again and again in the reviews, often unprompted, and some listeners say it lifted the book for them.

Book Synopsis

Rebecca Charity has spent years preparing for one job. Callisto, the organisation that took her in after vampires killed her parents, has sent her to Tynahine University in the Scottish Highlands, one of the few places where the undead and the living attend lectures together. Somewhere on campus, the hunters believe, is the Book of Blood and Roses — a fabled record of every way a vampire can die. Rebecca’s task is to find it and bring it home. Her cover is to be an ordinary human student.

The cover lasts about as long as it takes to meet her roommate. Aliz Astra is the heir of a vampire dynasty, beautiful in a way Rebecca has been trained to treat as a weapon, and far more curious about the new girl than is safe. Then Aliz saves Rebecca’s life, and the rescue goes wrong in a way neither of them intended: Rebecca ends up bound to Aliz as her Familiar, a tie with rules and consequences neither of them fully understands.

Now a hunter and a vampire share a room, a secret and a deadline. The bond has to be dealt with before the next full moon, which means working together, which means trust that neither of them has any reason to give. The longer Rebecca spends inside Aliz’s world, the less it resembles the one Callisto described. And the book she came to steal might not be the weapon she was promised.

My Review

The premise is excellent, and I want to say so first because most of what follows is qualified. A hunter rooming with the heiress of the family she has been raised to destroy is one of the cleanest engines in romance, and Summerlee wires it into the plot rather than leaving it as a backdrop. Every softer moment between Rebecca and Aliz carries risk, because Rebecca is lying about who she is the entire time, and the reviews that love this book love it for exactly that tension.

The second real strength is the world. Tynahine University is a good invention: a place where vampires and humans share a campus by treaty, so every lecture hall comes with a power imbalance built in. The vampire lore bends the familiar rules enough to feel fresh, and the Familiar bond is a smart device — it forces the leads into dependence before they are ready for intimacy, which is what makes the forced proximity feel earned rather than arranged.

Where it struggles is structure, and this is not one reader’s gripe. The most repeated complaint in the reviews is that the ending feels rushed. Close behind it is a cluster of plot-logic complaints: twists that feel too convenient, a book hunt that resolves with less drama than its build-up promised, and the occasional geographic or practical slip that pulled readers out. Several reviewers also felt the romance moves fast for two women who have known each other for weeks, and a few called it insta-lust rather than slow burn. A smaller group found the characters thinner than the premise, and one reviewer said that despite leads in their twenties, it reads like young adult fiction.

One expectation to reset: the cover, all gothic black and red, sells a dark vampire romance, and the content warnings do include graphic gore and blood. But readers describe the experience as an adventure-mystery with a romance at its centre, closer to a fast campus thriller than to a slow, decadent vampire novel. If you came for darkness, calibrate; if the vampire cover worried you, relax. This is not A Dowry of Blood.

My honest note: A four-star premise and a well-matched pair, carried at three-and-a-half-star plotting. If you read for chemistry, lore and a good narrator, it delivers; if you need every twist to be airtight, the last act will frustrate you.

Element	In The Book of Blood and Roses
Central relationship	Rebecca Charity & Aliz Astra — undercover vampire hunter and vampire heiress, enemies-to-lovers
Core tropes	Hunter and vampire, roommates, accidental Familiar bond, forbidden love, secret mission, dark academia
Setting	Tynahine University near Inverness — a Highland campus shared by vampires and humans
Heat level	3/5 — open door (romance.io steam rating)
Series	The Callisto Chronicles book 1 of 2 — some closure, wider plot continues; book 2, The Death of a Coven, expected January 2027
Content notes	Graphic gore, violence and blood; murder and death of parents; grief; xenophobia; minor gun violence and war; a grooming reference; a power imbalance in the magical bond

How Spicy Is The Book of Blood and Roses?

A 3/5. romance.io rates it 3 of 5, open door, and readers agree: they describe the heat as moderate and present without dominating. One reviewer calls the forced-proximity romance scorching, while another says the spice met her expectations without going further. The more consistent finding is that the sexual tension, especially around the bite and the bond, does more work than the explicit scenes.

The one thing worth knowing in advance is the Familiar bond. It ties Rebecca to Aliz magically before either has chosen the other, and at least two reviewers were uncomfortable with that — one stopped reading over the uneven power it creates, and another questioned how consensual the romance’s foundation is. No reviewer I read flags specific kink content beyond the vampire biting. If you want this heat level in a darker vampire register, A Dowry of Blood sits in the same band, and Bone of My Bone runs cooler with more gothic dread.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a sapphic vampire romance with a hunter-and-monster dynamic, you like a campus setting with its own politics and lore, you prefer moderate open-door heat to wall-to-wall spice, and you enjoy a book that ends a chapter of the story while leaving room for the next.

You may want to skip it if: you need a slow burn rather than a fast-tracked attraction, you are bothered by magical bonds that remove choice, you want tight plotting with no convenient turns, or you only read complete series and do not want to wait for book two.

In short: a strong pairing in a fun vampire world, told at a pace that sprints exactly where it should have slowed down.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is a traditionally published debut doing steady, unglamorous business rather than riding a viral wave. Del Rey bought North American rights, Penguin Michael Joseph pre-empted the UK edition, and German and Italian rights sold at auction; the German edition arrived in April 2026 under the title Cursed. The Goodreads count has kept climbing since its January release to 4,837 ratings, with the average at 3.90. The US paperback arrives on October 6, 2026, which is likely to bring the next wave of readers. The audiobook from Random House Audio, read by Katie Leung and running 12 hours 31 minutes, is a real part of the story: it comes up in the reviews more than any other format.

Prefer audio? Listen to The Book of Blood and Roses on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The chemistry between Rebecca and Aliz, first and most consistently. Then the characters themselves — “flawed” and “character development” recur, and readers like that both women are allowed to be difficult. The vampire lore and the Highland university get credit for immersion, and several reviewers say they finished it in a day. Lesbian representation without a coming-out arc earns specific praise. Katie Leung’s narration is singled out by at least five StoryGraph reviewers, and one says it made the whole experience better. A good number of readers end their reviews by saying they want the sequel now, which is the best sign a series opener can get.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ending, above everything. At least four reviewers in the sample I read say the final act is rushed, and one says the book spends too long repeating itself early and then hurries the resolution. Second: plot logic. Readers describe convenient or confusing turns, a hunt for the titular book that fizzles, and small practical errors that broke immersion. Third: the speed of the romance — readers who wanted a slow burn call it insta-lust, and one wanted the romance developed more deeply, not faster. Beyond that, scattered notes on predictability, characters thinner than the premise, and a young adult feel. The Familiar bond splits readers: most treat it as a delicious device, while a minority see an uncomfortable power imbalance.

The series question everyone should ask first: book one does not end on a hard cliffhanger. Publishers Weekly describes satisfying closure with threads left open for later books, and at least one reader says it felt complete enough on its own. But it is the first of two, the larger Callisto plot continues, and the second book, The Death of a Coven, is listed on Goodreads for January 2027. If you need the whole story in hand, wait; if a resolved first chapter is enough, go now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does The Book of Blood and Roses end on a cliffhanger?

Not a hard one. The main arc reaches a satisfying point, but threads are left open for the sequel. Several readers felt the ending was rushed.

How spicy is The Book of Blood and Roses?

A 3/5 on romance.io, open door. Readers describe moderate heat, and the tension around the bite and the bond carries more of the romance than explicit content does.

Is The Book of Blood and Roses part of a series?

Yes. It is book one of The Callisto Chronicles, a two-book series from Del Rey. The second book, The Death of a Coven, is listed on Goodreads with an expected publication date of January 21, 2027.

Is The Book of Blood and Roses young adult?

No. It is published as adult romantasy, with open-door scenes and graphic violence. One reviewer still felt it reads young, which is a minority view.

Is there an audiobook of The Book of Blood and Roses?

Yes. Katie Leung narrates the Random House Audio edition, which runs 12 hours 31 minutes. The narration is one of the most praised things about the book.

If You Loved The Book of Blood and Roses, Read These Next

For another sapphic vampire novel with more darkness and less adventure, A Dowry of Blood is the obvious next step, and more intense on control and devotion. If the magic-school setting and rivals tension are the draw, Her Spell That Binds Me swaps vampires for Regency witches at much higher heat, with its own magical bond. And for vampires on a grander literary scale, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil follows queer women across centuries, with romance as one thread rather than the spine.

For more in this register, browse our sapphic vampire romance books, the books like Carmilla list, the sapphic gothic romance books guide, or the full Book Reviews collection. It also made our Top Ten Tuesday list of sapphic covers that take the story seriously.

The Bottom Line

The Book of Blood and Roses is a debut with a great hook and the confidence to build a real world around it. The hunter-and-vampire pairing crackles, the Highland university and its lore are a pleasure, and the audiobook gives it a second life. It is also rushed at the end, too convenient in its plotting, and quicker to put its leads together than the slow-burn crowd would like. Whether that trade is worth it depends on what you read romantasy for — but if chemistry and atmosphere come first for you, this is one of 2026’s more enjoyable sapphic series openers, and a forbidden-love romance that earns the word. Check The Book of Blood and Roses on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, The Book of Blood and Roses ranks as a confident traditionally published sapphic vampire romantasy debut — charged and atmospheric, held back by a hurried final act, and best approached for the pairing and the lore rather than the mystery plot.