Title: We Love the Nightlife
Author: Rachel Koller Croft
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: August 20, 2024
Length: 378 pages
Genre: Horror/fantasy
Source: Library
Rating:

Locked in a toxic female friendship, two vampires careen toward catastrophe in this dark and dazzling page-turner, set amidst London’s glittering disco scene.

London 1979. Two women with a deep love for disco meet one fateful night on the dance floor, changing the course of both their lives forever. Nicola, a beautiful and brooding vampire for nearly two centuries, can’t resist fun-loving and feisty Amber from America, ultimately offering an eternity together where the glamour of nightlife always takes center stage.

But not all is what it seems.

Nearly fifty years later, after an unexpected betrayal, Amber wants out from under Nicola’s thumb, but it won’t be so simple to break up this festering friendship when she learns others have done the same—and wound up dead. 

Sensing Amber’s restlessness and in one last play to keep her close, Nicola proposes they open a nightclub of their very own, hearkening back to their best days as dancing queens. Amber agrees but she’s secretly hatching a dangerous escape plan. And if she fails…the party is over for good.

Did I know I needed a book about disco-loving vampires? Well, no. But clearly, I did… because I totally fell for this book.

I should have known the party was over when she casually suggested killing my husband back in 1981.

Amber is the life of the party in London, 1979, living it up on the dance floors of the most exclusive discos — gorgeous, young, magnetic. She’s certainly caught Nicola’s attention. Nicola is lonely, loves disco, and needs a new companion, and Amber would be perfect… so long as the idea of fangs and drinking blood doesn’t scare her away.

God, was there anything more irresistible than a brand-new gal pal?

At first, Nicola and Amber’s life together is blissful. Nightly parties, dancing perfectly in sync, never too far from the glitter and the spotlight.

[…] we used to be the stars of each other’s shows. She was obsessed with me; I was obsessed with her. And we lived for the nightlife. For disco. For the sweetness of my fresh youth that she stole from me, when I didn’t yet understand the entirety of what she’d taken.

Eventually, though, the thrill wears off, especially once Amber starts to realize just how much and how often Nicola has betrayed her trust, as she isolates her, keeps her dependent, and keeps her distracted with shiny clothes, dance music, and endless luxuries.

Written with chapters alternating between now (told from Amber’s perspective) and the duo’s past (told from Nicola’s perspective), we see their tangled lives move from a fun-loving, live-in-the-moment ethos to a more desperate dynamic, still amazing on the surface, but brimming with scheming and manipulation behind every move.

Tonally, there are plenty of moments of silliness and pop culture fangirling, from the Donna Summers-inspired catchphrases Amber and Nicola use to show affection (“toot toot”, “beep beep”) to the Spice Girls soundtrack playing in the background of a memorable turning. And while Amber eventually gets serious and gets down to some deadly plotting of her own, she still manages to show her inner party girl:

When she smiles at me, I see her fangs have sprouted for the first time. They’re adorable!

I honestly loved this book from start to finish. This isn’t particularly deep or literary fiction… but it absolutely captured my attention and never let go. An unexpected twist toward the end simply stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps other, more astute readers might have seen it coming, but I was gobsmacked. And delighted — I’ve read enough books with twists that I think I’ve become a bit jaded and hard to surprise in some ways, but We Love the Nightlife nails it.

Besides being a terrific vampire story (with disco!! can’t stress the disco element enough!), you can also see We Love the Nightlife as a cautionary tale about codependent friends. Vampire element aside, the ways in which Nicola and Amber manipulate and subtly undermine one another while also holding tight and eliminating outside distractions, all in the name of being BFFs, could be true of non-supernatural friendships as well. The blood and fangs set them apart, but the ways they hurt one another are not to vampires.

The writing in We Love the Nightlife is delicious, dark when it needs to be dark, but also full of humor and lusciously described scenes of dancing and music and the 70s-era scene. It’s utterly engaging, and also bleak and scary when the tension ramps up and the big, explosive ending gets closer.

I enjoyed every bit of We Love the Nightlife, and now want to check out the author’s previous novel, Stone Cold Fox. Highly recommended, so long as you don’t mind blood splatters on your glittery disco ball.