“We’re each dealt our own unique affliction, Alice. Ours is death. Yours? Yours is life.”

PLOT SUMMARY:

Our Own Unique Affliction is the story of Alice Ann, a dejected immortal who longs for her life in the sun. Navigating guilt, loss, family, meaning, murder, and all that comes with the curse of living forever. An existential bleak, quiet until it’s not, hallucination on duality, rife with fangs, empathy, blood, and grief.

GRADE: A-

REVIEW:

Full disclosure, vampires are my favourite supernatural creature, but since they are my favourite, I usually don’t watch or read many books or movies that feature them because I am personally picky when it comes to vampires. My biggest gripe with most vampire books is the author leans too much on making them romantic heroes that they tend to forget or downplay the monstrous aspects that make these creatures absolutely terrifying. Alice Ann is no such vampire. Yes, she holds some smidgen of humanity but she’s also a brutal monster – and it’s a perfect balance. Alice Ann yearns for a life under the sun – and her memories of her family when she was human are viscerally moving and sad – especially when she sees immortality as a curse. I wasn’t too drawn to the human that essentially drove her and her sister around in a truck everywhere (I’m always iffy about humans that work for vampires or vampires relying on humans – it always seems like an odd relationship that will end up derailing at some point – and in the case of this novella it did just that). Usually, book endings are something that I don’t always like because most are lackluster even when the story has been amazing – however, Moses lands the perfect ending for this book – and it couldn’t have been better.

Read this if you like vampires, philosophical musings about mortality, and grief horror.

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