Should you read Carmilla before Hungerstone?
No — and yes. No: Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is built to stand alone. Yes: the original is about 28,000 words — one evening — it’s free, and it is the book Hungerstone argues with on every page.
The answer
If Hungerstone is already in your hands, read it — you’ll be fine. In every other case, read Carmilla first, tonight. The novella costs nothing, finishes in under two hours, and already holds every image Dunn reworks — the crashed carriage, the languid guest, the hunger dressed as love.
What Hungerstone actually is
Hungerstone (Zando, February 2025; paperback February 2026) is sold openly as a reworking of Carmilla — and it worked: national bestseller, an NPR best book of 2025, a Lambda Literary Award winner. Dunn moves the story to the Peak District in 1888: Lenore, ten years into a chilly marriage to steel magnate Henry, is readying a country house for a shooting party when a carriage accident leaves a woman named Carmilla in her care. Appetite — for food, for women, for a life not chosen for her — replaces the vampirism of 1872, and in her own essay on the book, Dunn is explicit about writing back at the Victorian original.
Side by side
| What | Carmilla, 1872 | Hungerstone, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| The teller | Laura — nineteen, lonely in a Styrian schloss, writing it down years later. | Lenore — a decade into a cold marriage, run like one of her husband’s works. |
| The arrival | A carriage crashes at the bridge below the schloss; a languid guest stays. | A carriage crashes on the moors; a languid guest stays. |
| The hunger | Blood, dressed as courtship — “the ardor of a lover.” | Appetite itself — food, desire, rage, undressed. |
| The heat | Nothing on the page; all of it in the restraint. | Explicit — reviewers are unanimous. |
| The length | About 28,000 words; an evening. | A full novel; a weekend. |
| The men | Fathers and a General — protective, useless, lethal. | A husband — and what a wife’s compliance costs. |
The split verdict
The reception is divided, and the divide is useful. The Mary Sue called it one of the best Carmilla adaptations there is. The Lesbrary ran two reviews that disagree — one haunted by it, one let down and wanting more Carmilla on the page. Both camps agree on what the book is doing; they split on whether it works. Note the disappointed camp’s complaint: not enough Carmilla. The original is 28,000 words and free.
What you’d miss by skipping 1872
Mostly: a book that cannot say what it is saying. Dunn writes appetite openly; Le Fanu couldn’t say it at all, and that pressure is important — dread and desire in the same sentence, a courtship conducted entirely in murmurs. It comes through fully only in the original. You’d also miss the original ending, stranger and quieter than any adaptation keeps it — the conversation page spoils it properly.
Styria · Laura · Chapter IV
“I have been in love with no one, and never shall,” she whispered, “unless it should be with you.”
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight!
Quick answers
Do I need to read Carmilla first?
No — it stands alone. But the original is an evening long and free, and reading it first turns the retelling into an argument you can hear both sides of.
Is Hungerstone a retelling of Carmilla?
Explicitly — the publisher sells it as a reworking of the vampire novel that inspired Dracula. The carriage, the guest, the unnameable illness: all inherited, all reworked.
Is Hungerstone spicier than Carmilla?
Considerably — reviewers agree. The novella has nothing explicit; the heat is all in the restraint.
How long is Carmilla?
About 28,000 words — under two hours for most readers. Free at Project Gutenberg and featured, free, in Chromatics.
What else reworks Carmilla?
S.T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice (2024, dark academia), Amy Chu’s graphic novel Carmilla: The First Vampire, the 2014–16 web series — and Dracula, depending who you ask.
Read the original before the retelling — Carmilla is featured in Chromatics now, free in full, every voice in its own color.
Free on iPhone and iPad. Point your phone’s camera here. On Android?