Review of Loving Safoa by Liza Wemakor
Loving Safoa by Liza Wemakor (Neon Hemlock, 2024) is a novella featuring Black lesbian vampires, with aspects of vampirism that I haven’t seen in many stories featuring vampires. But this approach is interwoven into a story that spans centuries and locations.
Cynthia begins the story as a mortal woman who is very close to changing into a vampire, a result of her lover, Safoa’s, frequent consensual feeding on her blood. As she worries about what this means for her future, she latches on to a piece of Safoa’s past as a tangible piece of her worry. The story blossoms from that point, interweaving Safoa’s past and Cynthia and Safoa’s shared present and future. The novella visits with these two characters at various points, sharing slices of their lives and relationship.
The non-linear nature of this novella often meant that you only see a portion of the story, with some aspects never explained or even addressed. There were certainly things I would have liked to learn more about, though expanding upon them could easily have made this a novel rather than a novella. I also would have loved more time with some of the secondary characters, but since the book centers Cynthia and Safoa, those secondary characters are primarily just walk-on roles in the story.
If you like vampire fiction and are looking for an unusual twist on most of the commonly shared lore, or if you enjoy books about Black lesbian couples with lovely prose, check out Loving Safoa!
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