THE LAST VAMPIRE

A New York City teenager unwittingly awakens a vampire at her boarding school.

When Lorena Navarro and her best friend, Salma Santos, are accepted to Huntington Academy, a new, highly selective school in New Hampshire, Lorena sees it as the perfect chance to start over. A scandal she was involved in has damaged her mother’s career as a parenting influencer, and she’s eager to move on. But her plans for a fresh start unravel when she, Salma, and their new friends discover a coffin and a hidden library in a forbidden wing of the school. Lorena is attacked by the coffin’s occupant, a strikingly handsome, 276-year-old vampire named William Pride, who’s “pale as a corpse.” He’s been in a death-sleep for centuries. Now bound to William as his Familiar, Lorena is pulled into the mystery of why he was sleeping, what became of his family, and what happened to vampire-kind. The closer they get to the truth, the greater the danger, not only for Lorena and William but for their friends as well. Vampire enthusiasts will appreciate the familiar tropes, but once the lore explaining what has happened to the rest of the vampires is revealed, the plot grows unwieldy. William and Lorena’s romance, while central to the narrative, lacks the emotional depth and gradual development needed to feel fully believable. Lorena is Argentinian American, and Salma is cued Latine.

Largely entertaining but loses steam at the end.