Dracula

My rating: 3 stars

What I Liked:
-the epistolary format which adds suspense to the novel
-Mina Harker is an excellent protagonist, and often the only person in the Dracula hunting party with a functioning brain cell. She is one of the few characters who has a somewhat defined personality, even though at times it is very evident that she is being written by a male author.
-The relationship between Jonathan and Mina is astonishingly healthy, with both possessing an equal devotion to the other. They are couple goals.
-Dracula, for the most part, was an interesting villain. He is not a being whose motivations is blood thirst alone but rather bringing fear and torment seems to be his primary motive as proven with his insistence on draining Lucy even when it requires more energy and effort than selecting a new victim.

What I disliked
-the book's pacing went off-rhythm after Lucy's death , resulting in a final product that could stand to have fifty or so pages removed by an editor.
-Almost all characters in the book have an incredibly shallow characterization which results in many characters feeling like cardboard cut-outs serving as unnecessary additions or plot devices.
-Bram Stoker refused to give even the POV characters like Lucy, Mina, Jonathan, Seward or Van Helsing a distinct voice in their journal entries, leaving one to rely on the subtitles which inform the reader of the POV. The closest the reader gets to having a character with a distinct voice is Van Helsing's incorrect grammar.
-I found Stoker's insistence on writing dialogue in the accent of the character speaking annoying and it grew frustrating as time grew on.