What do you think?
Rate this book
Appetite: A Lesbian Vampire Novella
Love is dead—and hungry for fresh victims.
Olya has resigned to spending her eternity alone. After a century of siring girlfriend after girlfriend, she finally chose too her last flame turned out to be a serial killer with a taste for other vampires. Olya was left a bloody puddle, her havens and reputation destroyed. It’s taken years to rebuild a semblance of—single—unlife.
But just like Olya, the past doesn’t always stay dead. One evening, she wakes up to a fledgling threatening her with a silver knife. Apparently, Olya’s pet butcher found a new victim in the fledgling’s partner. Which means she’s back in town.
And it’s only a matter of time before she ravages Olya’s life again.
Olya has resigned to spending her eternity alone. After a century of siring girlfriend after girlfriend, she finally chose too her last flame turned out to be a serial killer with a taste for other vampires. Olya was left a bloody puddle, her havens and reputation destroyed. It’s taken years to rebuild a semblance of—single—unlife.
But just like Olya, the past doesn’t always stay dead. One evening, she wakes up to a fledgling threatening her with a silver knife. Apparently, Olya’s pet butcher found a new victim in the fledgling’s partner. Which means she’s back in town.
And it’s only a matter of time before she ravages Olya’s life again.
69 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 14, 2026
About the author
M Zakharuk
4 books23 followersM Zakharuk (she/ze/zir) is a non-binary lesbian writer dedicated to messy and thrilling fiction centring lesbian characters. She's lived in Chernivtsi, Kyiv, and Dublin, and can be found @mzakharuk on Bsky.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 17, 2026
A fantastic novella about vampirism, lesbianism and nihilism! I loved reading about Olya, her struggles and her many loves! Can't recommend it highly enough.
February 23, 2026
What if the vampire heartthrob of your dreams… was broke?
Castles and counts, cloaks and cashmere—class, affluence and aristocracy have been indelible aspects of many a vampire myth, whether as a commentary on the parasitism of ruling classes, or more frequently on the supposed inseparability of decadence, debauchery and deviance. Before this gilded edifice, M Zakharuk boldly poses the question: why do we assume that longevity necessarily correlates with wealth? How can a person—legally dead, unable to emerge during the day, and obligated to sate urges and appetites most violent—expect to accumulate things as scarce as security and stability, let alone luxury?
Instead, let us imagine an affliction that is as much a burden as it is a blessing. That at once unlocks new possibilities of pleasure and freedom while imbuing you with an unquenchable thirst and insatiable hunger, so you may revel in a forever-famished feast of flesh, but will never be fully satisfied. A condition that makes you more precarious, more repellent to those who inhabit and cling to society’s ‘normalcy’, plunging you into an undercaste of fugitives and undesirables who will be your brethren and your bane in equal measure.
I am speaking, of course, of lesbianism. And the lesbians are vampires.
Appetite is, at its beating, ruddy heart, a story about rogues and runaways, about the lifeless and barren women who do not reproduce as society wishes them to, but instead infect each other with touches and smiles and promises they can’t always keep. Olya, our protagonist, has been at this for longer than she ever expected to be, because eternal life is less eternal than advertised when said life is also a violent and bloody one. She has spent decades rescuing women from ignoble deaths, from the slow drudgery of being ground down by poverty and patriarchy, extinguishing their old, withered selves and birthing them into a new life of excitement, danger, and passion. Olya can give these women, each and every one beloved, so many things except the one thing that we all crave the most.
A future.
Zakharuk paints in vivid reds and viscera, bringing to undeath a story about the liminality of queer existence, of a damned life lived at the fringes. It is brutal and unforgiving in parts, less because of the actual gore dripping from vicious fangs, and more because of the constant reminder of our own fragility, our own alienation, and most of all our own struggle to find a foothold in a world that abhors us. She asks difficult questions about what it means to rouse yourself from torpor and live for others when there’s nothing but affection tying them to you, what it means to find family amongst your lovers and vice versa, and the responsibility we have to see ourselves as more than uninterred corpses awaiting our inevitable doom. It is a piece of fiction that blends metaphor with meaning and theme so effortlessly and fluidly that it renders the symbolism obvious, apparent, unmistakable, leaving you wondering how and why there aren’t more works in this vein.
Which is not to say that Appetite is all meditation and gloom—far from it. Zakharuk’s writing is sharp, sexy, and incisive in all the right ways, a salacious and sizzling celebration of everything that makes being a dirty, depraved dyke worth it. This book will make your blood run hot and leave you breathless and ragged, parched for more even when it’s finished having its way with you. It is a welcome entry from an exciting lesbian author that is sure to leave you voracious for her future offerings. An absolute must-read for anyone who considers themselves a lover of lesbian fiction.
Castles and counts, cloaks and cashmere—class, affluence and aristocracy have been indelible aspects of many a vampire myth, whether as a commentary on the parasitism of ruling classes, or more frequently on the supposed inseparability of decadence, debauchery and deviance. Before this gilded edifice, M Zakharuk boldly poses the question: why do we assume that longevity necessarily correlates with wealth? How can a person—legally dead, unable to emerge during the day, and obligated to sate urges and appetites most violent—expect to accumulate things as scarce as security and stability, let alone luxury?
Instead, let us imagine an affliction that is as much a burden as it is a blessing. That at once unlocks new possibilities of pleasure and freedom while imbuing you with an unquenchable thirst and insatiable hunger, so you may revel in a forever-famished feast of flesh, but will never be fully satisfied. A condition that makes you more precarious, more repellent to those who inhabit and cling to society’s ‘normalcy’, plunging you into an undercaste of fugitives and undesirables who will be your brethren and your bane in equal measure.
I am speaking, of course, of lesbianism. And the lesbians are vampires.
Appetite is, at its beating, ruddy heart, a story about rogues and runaways, about the lifeless and barren women who do not reproduce as society wishes them to, but instead infect each other with touches and smiles and promises they can’t always keep. Olya, our protagonist, has been at this for longer than she ever expected to be, because eternal life is less eternal than advertised when said life is also a violent and bloody one. She has spent decades rescuing women from ignoble deaths, from the slow drudgery of being ground down by poverty and patriarchy, extinguishing their old, withered selves and birthing them into a new life of excitement, danger, and passion. Olya can give these women, each and every one beloved, so many things except the one thing that we all crave the most.
A future.
Zakharuk paints in vivid reds and viscera, bringing to undeath a story about the liminality of queer existence, of a damned life lived at the fringes. It is brutal and unforgiving in parts, less because of the actual gore dripping from vicious fangs, and more because of the constant reminder of our own fragility, our own alienation, and most of all our own struggle to find a foothold in a world that abhors us. She asks difficult questions about what it means to rouse yourself from torpor and live for others when there’s nothing but affection tying them to you, what it means to find family amongst your lovers and vice versa, and the responsibility we have to see ourselves as more than uninterred corpses awaiting our inevitable doom. It is a piece of fiction that blends metaphor with meaning and theme so effortlessly and fluidly that it renders the symbolism obvious, apparent, unmistakable, leaving you wondering how and why there aren’t more works in this vein.
Which is not to say that Appetite is all meditation and gloom—far from it. Zakharuk’s writing is sharp, sexy, and incisive in all the right ways, a salacious and sizzling celebration of everything that makes being a dirty, depraved dyke worth it. This book will make your blood run hot and leave you breathless and ragged, parched for more even when it’s finished having its way with you. It is a welcome entry from an exciting lesbian author that is sure to leave you voracious for her future offerings. An absolute must-read for anyone who considers themselves a lover of lesbian fiction.
June 6, 2026
I need all my queer friends who enjoy toxic vampire yuri to read this right now please please please please please
This book was so much fun. I suppose I should clarify that it's not a lighthearted read, it touches on some fairly heavily topics (depression, abusive relationships, uh, murder) but Olya's cynical narration was a treat to read, and the prose was delicious. It felt like a very realistic look into what it would mean for the average person to become a vampire, and how 'survival' and 'living' are both two different things, but overlap more than you might think. To live, you need to survive. And sometimes in the course of surviving, you stumble upon living. You realize that maybe you do, in fact, care about the little things. Even if "living" is "un-life" in this case.
Yeah, I just really loved the characters, I loved the writing, I loved the way the world felt grounded even as we were dealing with supernatural elements, I loved the emotional arc of the book. It took me about two hours to read and (again, though it deals with heavy topics) it was a really fun romp!
This book was so much fun. I suppose I should clarify that it's not a lighthearted read, it touches on some fairly heavily topics (depression, abusive relationships, uh, murder) but Olya's cynical narration was a treat to read, and the prose was delicious. It felt like a very realistic look into what it would mean for the average person to become a vampire, and how 'survival' and 'living' are both two different things, but overlap more than you might think. To live, you need to survive. And sometimes in the course of surviving, you stumble upon living. You realize that maybe you do, in fact, care about the little things. Even if "living" is "un-life" in this case.
Yeah, I just really loved the characters, I loved the writing, I loved the way the world felt grounded even as we were dealing with supernatural elements, I loved the emotional arc of the book. It took me about two hours to read and (again, though it deals with heavy topics) it was a really fun romp!
February 22, 2026
Short but excellent. I enjoyed all of the characters, but particularly the protagonist, and particularly the moment when you realise that maybe, just maybe, she's not an entirely reliable narrator and what I previously thought was "a vampire's life in this setting is horrible misery" is really "the narrator is deeply traumatised, depressed and has simply given up on happiness." That's really clever writing.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews