One of My Patients is a Vampire

by Abigail Moyer

A woman acquitted of murder but condemned to myth lures a disillusioned psychiatrist into a gothic mystery.

Dr. Ian Greyson does not condone violence. He does not condone biting directly into a KitKat bar. And he certainly does not condone calling one of his patients a vampire.

And yet in chocolate-town Hershey, Pennsylvania, that is exactly what happens. Ian absorbs misery for a living. He treats denture-throwing widows and calico cat smugglers at his strip-mall therapy practice, spending most of his days wondering which supernatural deity he betrayed enough to end up here.

But one day, in the Walmart beside his office, a child wielding a lollipop tells him one of his patients is a vampire. It’s absurd—a joke, a byproduct of a child’s overactive imagination—until a body turns up at his door drained of blood.

And his newest patient is Hershey’s favorite suspect. Years after a jury acquitted Alexandra Abrams of heinous crimes, public imagination has made her a monster again. Her eerie, ethereal presence does little to help.

Ian is seduced by her ability to soothe the ache he has mistaken for a personality. But he quit forensic psychiatry because he was too attracted to the dangerous. Is he defending a wrongfully accused monster, or simply obsessed with one?

And if not her, which one of his patients is a vampire?

Genres: Horror, Romance, Gothic, Vampires, Thriller, Fiction, Fantasy

326 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication October 26, 2026

Reviews

[Amena B]

I genuinely did not expect to love this book THIS much.

I went into this book because the title immediately intrigued me, and somehow ended up with a dark, weird, hilarious, emotional mystery that had me constantly changing my theories and questioning what the hell was actually going on.

First of all, the dark humor in this book is EVERYTHING. Ian’s inner thoughts had me laughing so hard, especially during his sessions with his patients. This man is going through some serious shit and somehow his brain still manages to be one of the funniest places to be. I loved his voice from the beginning, and that humor never felt like it took away from the darker parts of the story. If anything, the contrast made me love it even more.

And his patients!! I wasn’t expecting to become so attached to them. What started as some of the funniest scenes slowly became something much more emotional. Sarah absolutely stole a piece of my heart, and I loved Harry too. Ian’s relationships with them brought this unexpected found-family feeling to the story that I really wasn’t prepared for.

Then we have Alexandra Abrams.

Listen… the chemistry between these two had me confused at first because she’s supposed to be this potentially murderous woman and he’s supposed to be HER PSYCHIATRIST. Professional boundaries? Apparently we don’t know her. 😂 But the more I read, the more that strange connection started to feel like something much deeper.

And THE YEARNING???

Ian Greyson, the man that you are.

The way this man yearns for her is actually ridiculous. Their chemistry kept getting better and better, but what really got me was the feeling that these two were somehow drawn to each other in a way neither of them completely understood. Once the story started giving me answers, some of their earlier interactions hit completely differently.

I also loved how much this book made me theorize. At the beginning I genuinely had NO IDEA where the story was going. Then little pieces started falling into place and suddenly I was suspicious of everyone, questioning everything and coming up with theory after theory. Some were completely wrong, some were surprisingly close, and some actually made me feel ridiculously proud of myself when everything finally came together. 😂

And that’s probably one of my favorite things about the mystery: the answers don’t come all at once. You learn something, think you’re finally understanding what’s happening, and then another piece changes the entire picture again. It kept me wanting to know more all the way through.

But underneath all the mystery, dark humor and absolute insanity, this book ended up being so much more emotional than I expected. There is grief here. Love. Obsession. Loneliness. People being told they’re monsters until they start believing it themselves. And this idea of loving someone even when so much has been taken away from you really got to me.

My only complaint?

I WANTED MORE AT THE END

Not because I disliked the ending. I just became so invested in these characters and especially Ian and Alexandra that after everything, I wanted more time with them. You cannot give me THAT much chemistry, THAT much yearning and then expect me to calmly accept that the book has run out of pages. Absolutely unreasonable behavior

I was already sitting around 48% thinking please, please deliver because this feels like a 5 stars read .. And it did.


Thank you to the author and BookSirens for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review


——— A gothic vampire horror thriller? Say no more

-- Thank you to Book Sirens for the opportunity and ARC.

[Literary Redhead]

Oy, what a story!

Pulled in by that gorgeous cover and provocative title, I found myself requesting this crazy tale on BookSirens even though I NEVER read vampire thrillers. And once I started, I read addictively to the end, gripped as if driving by a highway crash and not able to look away.

This story has cheeky humor, irony, tenderness, and unexpected truths about trauma and recovery and relationships. Highly recommended for any reader wanting something completely different, something that inexplicably stays with you, long after the last page is turned.

[Abigail Moyer]

ARC now available for request on Edelweiss. Thank you!

[Stella]

No intelligent commentary today.

I simply need to say that a book involving murder, therapy, questionable ethics, vampires, chronic pain, cats, Hershey bars and deeply damaged people should NOT have worked this well.

Yet here we are.

Adding this one to my list of books I’m glad I picked up. Loved it!

[Carlo Canna]

Ian: “I am a highly educated psychiatrist.”

Also Ian: makes approximately every emotionally questionable decision available to him.

Me: understandable, carry on.

Loved this.

[Paityn Sweeney]

I picked up One of My Patients Is a Vampire expecting a quirky supernatural mystery and ended up getting something far stranger, funnier, darker, and more emotionally affecting than I was prepared for.

At the center of the story is Dr. Ian Greyson, a psychiatrist in Hershey, Pennsylvania, whose life is already chaotic enough before a mysterious child tells him that one of his patients is a vampire. Shortly afterward, a body is found near his office, drained of blood, and suddenly Ian is forced to look at the people sitting across from him very differently.

That premise alone is fantastic, but what surprised me most was how much heart Abigail Moyer packs underneath all the weirdness.

Ian is such a memorable narrator. He is sarcastic, exhausted, intelligent, wildly judgmental in his own head, emotionally damaged, and somehow still deeply compassionate. His inner monologue made me laugh constantly, especially because he can go from serious psychiatric analysis to the most ridiculous observation imaginable in about three seconds.

And the patients? Absolute chaos.

There are moments in this book that are so bizarre I genuinely had to stop and think, “What on earth am I reading?” Yet somehow the ridiculousness never completely erases the humanity underneath it. Someone can appear absurd, frustrating, inappropriate, or completely unhinged, and then Moyer quietly reveals the loneliness, grief, fear, or shame sitting beneath the behavior.

That balance really impressed me.

The introduction of Alexandra Abrams completely changed the emotional energy of the book for me. She is mysterious, elegant, unsettling, compassionate, intense, and impossible to ignore. One of the things I loved most about her is that Moyer does not introduce her simply as a mysterious “dangerous woman.” Her first major impression comes through tenderness, when she instinctively comforts someone in the middle of a breakdown.

From there, the relationship between Ian and Alexandra becomes one of my favorite parts of the novel.

It is messy.

It is complicated.

It is emotionally charged.

And yes, there were several moments when I wanted to grab Ian and scream, “Sir, boundaries exist for a reason.”

But the connection works because it goes beyond attraction. These two people seem to recognize things in one another that everyone else misses. The intimacy often comes from tiny gestures, someone noticing pain, understanding silence, or seeing through a coping mechanism rather than from anything traditionally romantic.

That really got me.

Ian's backstory also gave the book much more emotional weight than I expected. He carries chronic pain and enormous unresolved grief, and there is something heartbreaking about the fact that he once came to “the sweetest place on Earth” because he believed he was going there to die. Instead, he survived, but emotionally he never entirely learned how to live again.

That contrast between Hershey's chocolate-coated sweetness and everything dark happening underneath is brilliant.

Chocolate. Blood. Candy. Death. Rollercoasters. Trauma.

It sounds ridiculous written out like that, but somehow it works.

And then there is the humor.

This book is DARKLY funny.

Ian's obsession with candy, candles, cleanliness, patients behaving badly, Walmart, Tic Tacs, and the general indignity of existing had me laughing constantly. Some of the humor is intentionally outrageous, and the novel definitely isn't trying to be polite.

I appreciated that.

It has personality.

A lot of personality.

But underneath the mystery and comedy, this book kept making me think about something much more serious: how quickly we decide who someone is.

Patient.

Doctor.

Victim.

Murderer.

Monster.

Crazy.

Dangerous.

Broken.

Vampire.

The story keeps questioning whether those labels actually explain people or simply make them easier to judge.

That may have been my favorite element of the entire book.

Again and again, characters are trying to understand whether something is genuinely wrong with them or whether they have simply been told that they are wrong so many times that they started believing it themselves.

There is a phrase in the story about being stuck in a “loop of wrongness,” and that idea stayed with me long after I read it.

Because honestly, so many people in this novel are trapped in one.

Ian.

His patients.

Alexandra.

Everyone is repeating pain in different ways.

And somewhere underneath the murder investigation and possible vampirism is this surprisingly tender question:

What happens when someone finally looks at you and does not immediately try to fix you?

That is where this book really touched me.

I expected to care about the mystery.

I did.

But eventually I cared much more about the people caught inside it.

I cared about Ian's grief.

I cared about Alexandra's fear.

I cared about patients I initially thought were simply there for comic relief.

I cared about whether these people could stop defining themselves through the worst thing that had happened to them.

And that emotional evolution made the story feel much richer than its wonderfully ridiculous title suggests.

Abigail Moyer has written something genuinely difficult to categorize here. It is part psychological mystery, part gothic romance, part dark comedy, part murder investigation, part medical weirdness, and part deeply messy character study.

And somehow it works.

This book is strange in the best possible way.

Funny when it should probably not be funny.

Tender when I least expected it.

Uncomfortable at times.

Very eccentric.

Very human.

And beneath all the fangs, blood, chocolate, chaos, and psychological madness, surprisingly full of heart.

I started reading because I wanted to know which patient was the vampire.

I kept reading because I desperately wanted these bizarre, damaged people to be okay.

That is probably the best compliment I can give it.

[Bella Rodriguez]

I need somebody to explain to me why a book called One of My Patients Is a Vampire has left me sitting in silence thinking about grief, shame, medical ethics, loneliness, chronic pain, public humiliation, emotional dependency, chocolate, and whether being understood by the wrong person can still save your life.

Because this was not the arrangement.

The arrangement was: vampire book. Funny title. Murder mystery. Maybe some camp.

Instead Abigail Moyer handed me Dr. Ian Greyson, who might genuinely be one of the most catastrophically self-aware and simultaneously self-deluded narrators I’ve read in a while.

Ian knows people.

That’s his whole thing.

He’s a psychiatrist. He has spent years listening to people say the unsayable. He is professionally trained to locate the wound beneath the behavior, the fear beneath the obsession, the story beneath the symptom.

And yet when it comes to himself?

Absolutely useless.

Spectacularly useless.

This man can analyze another human being while practically bleeding emotional dysfunction through his clothes and still somehow think he is the stable person in the room.

The setup is wonderfully stupid in the best possible way: a strange child tells Ian that one of his patients is a vampire, then a body appears near his office drained of blood, and suddenly Ian has to consider the possibility that the nonsense may not be entirely nonsense.

But the actual genius of the premise is that Ian already thinks half his patients are impossible to understand.

So now he’s looking at the same people he has been treating and mentally asking:

mentally ill?

dangerous?

traumatized?

lying?

supernatural?

just weird?

And sometimes the answer appears to be: yes.

I laughed so much during the early therapy scenes that I genuinely thought this was going to be a dark comedy with a murder attached.

Then Ian’s history started surfacing.

The man came to Hershey because he believed he was going to die there.

Not metaphorically.

He had accepted death.

He chose this absurdly sweet, candy-coated place as somewhere almost funny to disappear. Then he survived, and survival became its own kind of punishment.

That changed the book for me.

Suddenly all the chocolate stopped being purely funny.

The routines stopped being purely funny.

The obsessive tidiness stopped being purely funny.

The cynicism stopped being purely funny.

This entire personality that I had been enjoying as comic narration started looking like a survival structure.

And then Alexandra Abrams walked into the story and I fully understood why Ian’s remaining common sense packed a suitcase and left the state.

She is one of those characters you cannot describe properly without ruining the experience.

She doesn’t merely enter scenes.

She alters them.

The first thing that really lodged her in my mind wasn’t her appearance or mystery. It was the way she responds to another person’s breakdown. She sees distress and instinctively moves toward it instead of away from it. There is no hesitation, no disgust, no performance. She comforts someone Ian himself is struggling to calm.

That is when I thought:

Oh.

This woman is dangerous.

Not because of anything obviously threatening.

Because Ian is starving for exactly what she seems to offer.

Warmth.

Attention.

Relief.

Understanding.

And the book knows how dangerous those things can become when somebody has gone without them for too long.

There are places where Ian’s pain becomes so physical that I could almost feel my own shoulders tightening. Then Alexandra challenges him in this absolutely piercing way, asking whether he avoids what might help because he wants to feel bad or because he doesn’t think he deserves to feel good.

That question basically explains half the emotional damage in this novel.

Everyone in this book seems to be negotiating with some version of:

Do I deserve relief?

Do I deserve love?

Am I what other people say I am?

If something is wrong with me, can I still be loved without being repaired first?

And meanwhile the murder mystery keeps going.

The media circus grows.

Private pain becomes spectacle.

People get reduced to their strangest behavior and then judged as though that single behavior is their entire identity. The later public frenzy around Ian and his patients made the book feel uncomfortably current, especially when intimate vulnerabilities become material for outsiders to consume.

This book is feral.

It is sentimental.

It is grotesque.

It is ridiculous.

It is strangely compassionate.

It contains people doing things that should make me hate them and then somehow manages to make me understand them instead.

I don’t even know whether five stars is an objective assessment anymore.

I am compromised.

Ian Greyson has compromised me.

Abigail Moyer, please pay for my therapy.

[Brytan]

There is a moment in this book ( Ian is in his kitchen at three in the morning with Alexandra Abrams, and they are drinking hot chocolate she has spiked with Hershey’s syrup from a bottle he carries in his briefcase like a man who has given up and also not given up ) and I put the book down and just sat with it for a moment. Because that scene is doing so many things at once: it is funny, it is tender. And the book never announces any of this. It just puts them in a kitchen with chocolate and lets you feel it.

That is the quality this novel has throughout, and it is rarer than it should be.
Ian Greyson is introduced to us as a cynic — ‘I do not condone killing your children’ is the opening line, delivered deadpan, followed immediately by the world’s most comprehensive taxonomy of parental grievance — and the book seems at first to be pitching itself as dark comedy. A burned-out psychiatrist in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Exsanguinated bodies turning up next to the Walmart. A patient in love with his one-eared calico cat. These are comic premises, and the author milks them expertly. The Jennifer-the-cat scenes escalate to a level of absurdity that should not work and absolutely does.

But the comedy is armor, Ian’s and the novel’s both. Underneath it is something much more serious: a man who came to the sweetest place on Earth to die, who has been waiting to die for thirty years, who keeps his walls bare and his bed sheeted and his house dark because filling it would mean admitting he intends to keep living in it. The accident that took Christine, his fiancée, his intellectual equal, his person, also left him with chronic pain and a compulsive need for order that he self-medicates with candy and Yankee Candles. He knows what’s wrong with him. He’s a psychiatrist. He has diagnosed himself and found no cure and made a kind of peace with that, which is the saddest kind of peace there is.

Alexandra’s arrival disrupts all of this with a precision that feels almost engineered. She is everything Christine was , brilliant, boundary-pushing, drawn to the dangerous edges of what medicine can do, with thirty years of additional wreckage layered on top. She has a murder acquittal. She has a laboratory that appears in YouTube videos. She has blackout episodes she cannot explain, dead bodies she cannot account for, and a need to consume blood since a coma she doesn’t correctly remember. She has every reason to be a monster. The book refuses to confirm or deny this for a very long time, and the refusal is not a tease — it is the point. The question of whether Alexandra is dangerous is less interesting than the question of what Ian will do with his own answer.

Ian’s professional discipline breakds down in dozens of small moments. The author understands that desire accumulates rather than strikes, and she dramatizes the accumulation beautifully.

The mystery itself is well-constructed, the Hornby thread genuinely unsettling as it develops, and the portrait of Hershey. A chocolate-scented, rollercoaster-rumbling, built on someone’s dream of ideal American community and now somewhat beside its own point — works as both atmosphere and metaphor. Ian came here to die in a sweet place. Alexandra was forced here to be watched. Neither of them belongs in the fantasyland. Both of them are, perhaps, exactly where they need to be.

[Lesa Ruby]

If House M.D. wandered into an episode of Only Murders in the Building after binge-watching What We Do in the Shadows, it might wake up somewhere near this book.

That comparison sounds ridiculous, but so is One of My Patients Is a Vampire, and that is very much a compliment.

Ian Greyson has the abrasive intelligence and spectacular emotional self-sabotage that make characters like Dr. House so much fun to watch. He can read another person's behavior with frightening precision and still remain almost hilariously incapable of recognizing what is happening inside his own life. The difference is that Ian isn't merely cynical for entertainment. There is real damage underneath him. Chronic pain, grief, compulsive routines, loneliness, an almost abandoned relationship with his own future. Once the novel reveals that Hershey was originally where he expected to die, the whole candy-coated setting acquires this wonderfully sad irony.

Then add the Only Murders in the Building element: an increasingly bizarre death investigation, eccentric people who all seem capable of hiding something, public speculation, amateur theories, and that wonderful feeling that every new piece of information somehow makes the case less clear instead of more clear.

Except Ian's suspect pool is his patient list.

Which is objectively a terrible situation for a psychiatrist.

And excellent news for a reader.

The What We Do in the Shadows comparison is mostly about nerve. The book isn't afraid to put possible supernatural horror directly beside completely stupid human behavior. A corpse can be drained of blood and two pages later somebody is arguing about a cat, candy, or an appalling personal decision. That collision shouldn't work as often as it does.

But somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, the book becomes unexpectedly emotional.

Alexandra Abrams is where that happened for me.

She initially has the visual energy of someone who should come with ominous violin music and a warning label, but Moyer makes an important choice: one of Alexandra's first meaningful acts is not threatening at all. She sees somebody unraveling and simply comforts her. No hesitation. No payoff. Just instinctive gentleness.

And suddenly Ian's fascination with her starts making emotional sense.

He has spent years surrounded by people and somehow built an existence with almost no real warmth inside it.

Alexandra notices him.

That's far more dangerous to Ian than fangs.

The book gets gloriously messy from there. Ethics get messy. Affection gets messy. Diagnosis gets messy. Everybody's version of reality starts competing with everybody else's. The question stops being simply “which person is dangerous?” and becomes “how much of what we're seeing is being shaped by what we've already decided about them?”

That was the part that elevated this beyond a fun paranormal mystery for me.

House-style cynicism. Only Murders chaos. Vampire absurdity. An emotionally wrecked protagonist. A bizarre amount of chocolate.

Somehow: five stars.

[Maria Beltrami]

Ian Greyson is a psychiatrist. Once renowned for his uncanny ability to understand the minds of the most depraved serial killers, following the terrible accident in which he lost his beloved partner, he retired to Hershey, Pennsylvania, a model town founded by the candy tycoon Milton S. Hershey. Hershey is one of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers, and Ian Greyson has practically developed an addiction to their products, which seem to be the only thing capable of soothing his pain – a terrible psychological pain that often turns into unbearable physical suffering.
In Hershey, Ian has resumed his work as a psychiatrist, albeit on a local scale, with eccentric patients such as the old lady who hates her children and shows her displeasure towards the psychiatrist by hurling her dentures at him, or the young bisexual man in love with his cat.
Then three baffling things happen: whilst at the shopping centre to buy the cleaning products he needs to tidy up his office after a particularly heated encounter with the denture-spitting old lady, Ian is approached by a strange little boy who tells him that one of his patients is a vampire; another psychiatrist, an old acquaintance of Ian’s, is found dead – and not simply dead, but completely drained of blood; and Alexandra Abrams turns up at his practice.
From this point onwards, the novel, which had started off almost humorously, takes a decidedly Gothic turn. Alexandra is an almost mythological figure: a woman who has been found not guilty of her daughter’s murder but whom the public regards not only as guilty but as a monster because of her experiments in neurosurgery.
The chemistry between Ian and Alexandra is immediately apparent, so strong that it transcends the boundaries between therapist and patient, with a degree of intimacy and familiarity that takes Ian back to the days he shared with his late partner. Meanwhile, however, other unexplained deaths occur; the police investigate, accusing Alexandra of being a vampire, and strange documents emerge that point to Ian’s past.
A genuinely difficult novel to classify: fantasy, thriller, horror, Gothic fiction, science fiction? I would say, above all, a novel about love and time. About a love that does not diminish over time and is capable of recognising itself even in the most extreme and unusual circumstances. A superbly written novel, with a rare ability to delve deeply into the characters, credible despite its utter implausibility, and, above all, very hard to put down.

[Danielle]

There are books you simply enjoy, then there are books that completely take over your life for a few days. This was one of the latter.

I was hooked from the very first page. The writing style immediately intrigued me and pulled me in. Every time I had to put the book down to go deal with life, I found myself longing for when I could get back to reading. It’s been a long time since I have wanted to stay up way past my bedtime to finish a book.

The prose is sharp, witty, and just a little unhinged in the best way possible. There were so many times I had to pause just to appreciate a beautifully written line. The descriptions Moyer uses are unlike any I have read in a while. For example “She was pale in a corpse left out in the New Orleans sun with roaches and worms kind of way.” This like perfectly captures the dark, vivid, witty humor that is woven in throughout the book.

What really stood out to me though, were the characters. Every single one of them are deeply flawed, messy, and at least morally grey. Their imperfections are exaggerated enough to make them fascinating. Despite all the terrible decisions the characters make, I felt myself sympathizing with most of them. Mrs. Gunthrie and Dr. Horny can kick rocks though.

Beneath the well-placed humor is a story about broken people trying to navigate life and learning how to deal with their grief. The balance between heartbreaking and hilarious is something Moyer really nailed.

My only small complaint, was the overuse of the phrase “coquettish smile” and it became a bit distracting once I noticed it. Also, this is more of a personal thing, but one of the terrible characters has the same first and last name as my dad so I was taken out of the story for a little bit. However, the description of said character made me cackle: he was “a soggy cheeseburger of a man.”

Given how this book completely consumed me from beginning to end, and how I kept gushing about it to anyone who would listen, this is easily a 5 star book.

If you love gothic horror with sharp (pun intended), witty prose, morally grey characters, dark humor, and stories that lean into the strange and unsettling, I can’t recommend One of My Patients is a Vampire enough.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Pranav Bhatnagar]

One of My Patients Is A Vampire drew me into such a strange, fascinating and emotionally layered world that I found myself thinking about Ian and Alexandra long after putting the story down. Ian immediately stood out to me because beneath his professional calm is a deeply lonely man still carrying the weight of his past, and I loved watching that carefully controlled life become increasingly complicated when Alexandra enters it. Alexandra is wonderfully mysterious, vulnerable and unpredictable, and I was constantly fascinated by the question of who she really is and what she is trying to understand about herself. What affected me most was the emotional conflict surrounding Ian, especially the way his feelings become tangled with memories of Christine and his fear of mistaking one person for another. That gave his connection with Alexandra such heartbreaking depth because caring for her also forces him to confront parts of himself that he has tried to leave behind. I loved the gradual development of their trust and the small moments where concern begins to become something much more personal. The mystery surrounding Alexandra, the strange deaths, her memory and the unsettling events around them kept me completely engaged, but it was the emotional uncertainty that truly held me. Norton also brought wonderful personality and humor into the story, giving Ian someone whose presence adds warmth to an otherwise increasingly unsettling situation. I appreciated how the supernatural elements never completely overshadow the human emotions underneath them. The story keeps asking questions about identity, memory, grief, love and whether we can ever truly understand another person when even they may not fully understand themselves. I genuinely cared about Ian's need to protect Alexandra and about the uncertainty surrounding everything he was beginning to feel. There is something deeply moving about watching a man who has spent so much time trying to understand other people's minds suddenly find himself confronted with feelings and circumstances that he cannot simply analyze away. Abigail Moyer has created a wonderfully unusual, suspenseful and emotionally complicated story, and I loved being drawn deeper into Ian and Alexandra's world.

[Lilith's_Library_]

Thank you to Abigail Moyer for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

There are books that instantly put a smile on your face, and One of My Patients is a Vampire was one of them. With its quirky premise, lovable characters, witty humour, and heartwarming romance, this paranormal rom-com completely charmed me from the very first chapter.

Abigail Moyer takes the classic vampire trope and gives it a fresh, cozy twist. Blending everyday medical life with supernatural chaos creates a story that's both hilarious and surprisingly heartfelt. Every chapter offered something new, whether it was laugh-out-loud banter, swoon-worthy moments, or emotional scenes that added real depth to the characters.

The romance develops at a satisfying pace, allowing the connection between the characters to feel genuine and earned. Their chemistry is effortless, full of playful teasing, awkward encounters, and moments of vulnerability that made it impossible not to root for them. I especially loved how the story balanced its lighthearted humour with themes of trust, acceptance, and learning to see beyond first impressions.

The supporting cast brought even more life to the story, adding plenty of memorable moments and making the world feel vibrant and lived in. The paranormal elements never overshadowed the emotional core of the novel—instead, they enhanced it, creating a romance that felt both magical and relatable.

By the final page, I was grinning from ear to ear. This is exactly the kind of comfort read I love: fun, romantic, wonderfully imaginative, and filled with characters I'd happily spend more time with.

"Who knew treating a vampire could be so good for the heart?"

If you're looking for a paranormal romance that's equal parts funny, cozy, and swoon-worthy, One of My Patients is a Vampire deserves a spot on your TBR.

✨ Tropes & Themes
🧛 Vampire Romance
🩺 Medical Setting
💕 Slow-Burn Romance
😂 Humour & Banter
✨ Paranormal Rom-Com
❤️ Opposites Attract
🤝 Found Family
🌙 Supernatural Secrets
💖 Character Growth
📚 Cozy, Feel-Good Read

[Katie1998]

I found this strange, romantic, and unexpectedly moving while also being an interesting mystery. It’s a really cool combination.

The premise: a psychiatrist is warned that one of his patients is a vampire, and soon bodies begin appearing drained of blood. But what makes the book more interesting than a simple vampire mystery is the way it treats vampirism as both literal threat and emotional metaphor. Everyone in the story seems to be draining someone. Parents drain children. Patients drain doctors. Grief drains the living. Desire drains judgment. By the time the bloodless bodies appear, the idea of a vampire already feels emotionally true.

Alexandra’s very distinctive from the first time we see her. She wears a cobalt-blue coat like a uniform, and it immediately made me want one. Alexandra Abrams is not your standard femme fatale, and kind of isn’t a femme fatale at all. She’s tender and almost impossibly composed. She has a kind of comfort that feels supernatural before the book even needs to explain anything supernatural.

Alexandra might be dangerous. She might be manipulative. She might be a monster. But she also does the thing no one else in the room can do: she comforts someone who is falling apart.

The chemistry between Ian and Alexandra is one of the strongest parts of the book. It is not a clean and simple romance. It is tangled in professional boundaries, trauma, and possible murder. Comfort and danger are never separate.

The setting is also brilliant. Hershey, Pennsylvania is such a bizarrely perfect backdrop for this story. The candy, the theme park rides, the chocolate smells, the Walmart. That contrast gives the gothic atmosphere a freshness I really enjoyed. It is not another rainy castle or gloomy mansion. It is a strip mall in Hershey.

This will not be for everyone. The humor is dark, the characters are messy, and the story is unapologetically strange. But for readers who enjoy gothic horror-comedy, it’s great.

Thank you to Visage for the ARC.

[Marles Henry]

Set in Hershey, Pennsylvania (and yes, this is a real town where the chocolate factory is located), this book was described as gothic mystery. Dr Ian Greyson, a psychiatrist, started a quiet second life in Hershey after losing his fiancé and a chemical accident nearly ended his life. His practice routine unravelled when a child that told him one of his patients was a vampire. That patient in question was Alexandra Abrams, a former neurosurgeon acquitted of murdering her own daughter but convicted by the town's gossip. This was the beginning the kind of adventure that Ian didn’t want, but couldm’t resist, just like chocolate.
This is a very different kind of vampire story. It’s one where the very idea of a vampire is like a metaphor. A vampire drains a person just like trauma or grief does, where you start to survive rather than live, feeding on and reliving old wounds instead of moving through them. Ian and Alexandra recognise that hunger in each other, and their pull together reads less like a love story and more two helpless souls drawn together knowing it’s so bad that it’s good. It’s quite amusing that this was all happening in a town that promised a smile in every bar; the difference is that the smile included vampiric teeth, and a chocolate bar or two laced with blood.
I’d describe this story as a whirling dervish. Ther are lots of bodies found drained of blood, lots of lost memories, lots of messy characters that seem to be clinging to loose morals. Their choices seemed more foolish and irrational and were in no way connected to the lore of vampires and everything to do with whether anything was believable. The only thing I will say is expect an ending that arrives quickly: it’s a Hershey’s ‘say it with a kiss’ finale that needed just a little more. I guessed the twist before its ending but I don’t think suspense was the key factor here. It was the audacity of the story to be weird, ridiculous, and bittersweet all at once. But you may never look at kit-kats in the same way, again!

[Megan Janae]

Diagnosis: Case of unmet potential.
Prognosis: Still with the visit.
Script: go into this for vibes!

One of My Patients Is a Vampire had all the ingredients to become a standout read for me. An intriguing premise? Check. A dark mystery? Absolutely. Messy, morally complicated characters? Sign me up.

On paper, this sounded like exactly the kind of story I love.

Unfortunately, the execution never fully came together for me.

The writing often felt choppy, which made it difficult to settle into the rhythm of the story, and while I appreciated that the characters were intentionally flawed, many of their choices left me more frustrated than fascinated. There were also several moments that stretched my suspension of disbelief not because of the paranormal elements, but because some character actions felt difficult for me to reconcile within the story itself…and not the fun, campy unrealistic you want from a book with this premise.

Even with those frustrations, I never completely lost interest. The mystery was compelling enough that I genuinely wanted to know how everything would unfold, and I kept turning the pages hoping the story would fully click for me.

In the end, this felt like a book with an excellent premise that didn’t quite reach its full potential. That said, I can absolutely see this becoming a favorite for readers who enjoy quirky mysteries, messy characters, and stories that don’t take themselves too seriously.

It wasn’t quite the right fit for me but I have a feeling it will absolutely be someone else’s five-star read.

As for me… I’ll still take the vampire. I just wanted the story to bite a little harder.

Thank you Book Sirens for the opportunity and ARC.

[Mary]

This is what I hoped the Silent Patient was going to be when people kept telling me to read it.

A psychiatrist who has been quietly waiting to die for thirty years, a woman who can't trust her own memories, and there's a mystery involving drained bodies outside a Walmart in Hershey Pennsylvania. The plot moves fast and the mystery is genuinely clever but Ian was actually the really special part here. I was a bit worried about a male narrator, especially a gruff depressed one, but Ian is truly special. Moyer shows what it looks like when someone has stopped believing they have a future and then finds themselves wanting one anyway.

The mystery itself is more interesting than the premise implies. The question of who is draining bodies is genuinely difficult to answer because the book constructs the suspects carefully. Everyone has motive, and the red herrings are planted with real intelligence, not just in patient sessions which could have become boring. More importantly the mystery is never separate from the character work. Every clue uncovered tells you something about who these people are. The Hornby/medical thread in particular builds slowly and then lands with real weight.

The background characters are as rich as the main focus, Alexandra and Ian. Harry and his cat Jennifer are genuinely one of the funniest and simultaneously most moving bits. Sarah's arc wrecked me quietly in the background of everything else. And Norton, the fraud chakra-man charging five thousand dollars an hour in a converted church, somehow ends up being one of the most grounded presences in the book.

Didn't expect to feel that much. Kind of blown away.

[Christin Nord]

The title makes this sound like pure paranormal chaos, and to be fair, there is plenty of that. A strange child tells psychiatrist Ian Greyson that one of his patients is a vampire, and then a suspicious death near his office makes the warning much harder to laugh off.

What makes the book work, though, is Ian himself.

He is sharp, sarcastic, professionally observant, and hilariously incapable of applying any of that insight to his own life. He can analyze another person in seconds, yet his own grief, pain, routines, loneliness, and questionable decisions seem to live in a completely separate department.

Then Alexandra arrives, and Ian’s emotional stability basically hands in its notice.

She is mysterious, yes, but what makes her interesting is how attentive she is. Ian is used to reading people. Alexandra reads him back. That shift adds so much tension because suddenly the psychiatrist is the one being noticed a little too closely.

The patients are another highlight. Some of them initially seem absurd, but the book gradually adds enough context that the joke becomes more complicated. They stay strange, but they also become human. That balance is surprisingly effective.

There is murder, dark humor, possible vampirism, romance, grief, medical weirdness, and enough chocolate to make Hershey itself feel like part of the cast.

Some moments are completely over the top, but that is also part of the charm.

This book does not behave.

Ian certainly does not behave.

And somehow, that makes the whole thing ridiculously entertaining.

Such a lovely read. You can really feel the heart behind the story.

[Elizabeth]

One of My Patients Is a Vampire is a delightfully unconventional blend of dark comedy, murder mystery, and paranormal fiction that balances humor with surprisingly emotional depth. The writing is richly descriptive and immersive, using metaphor and introspection to explore grief, identity, and what it means to continue existing when you've outlived the life you expected to have. Death lingers in every corner of the story, yet it never overshadows the wit or charm that makes the narrative so engaging.

The protagonist is a compelling MMC struggling to maintain his sense of self in a world he never imagined he'd still be part of. Alongside him is a cast of unforgettable side characters who provide laugh out loud moments, while the deeper revelations gradually shift the story into something far more heartfelt than it first appears. I especially loved the "villain," whose compassion, vulnerability, and undeniable charisma constantly challenged the assumptions made about her.

The mystery kept me invested from beginning to end, leaving me intrigued, amused, and eager to piece everything together. While the conclusion felt intentionally understated, favoring realism over the sweeping, fantastical payoff I was expecting from a paranormal story, it didn't diminish how unique and enjoyable the overall reading experience was. This is a refreshingly different take on vampire fiction that blends mystery, humor, and emotion into a memorable read.

Thank you to BookSirens for the ARC.

[Christina Frøkjær]

One of My Patients Is a Vampire by Abigail Moyer is a delightfully unconventional blend of dark comedy, gothic mystery, and paranormal fiction that elegantly balances humor with emotional depth.

The novel brings us to the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, where the cynical psychiatrist Dr. Ian Greyson has his otherwise monotonous daily life turned completely upside down.

What starts as a strange warning from a child in the local Walmart quickly escalates into a living nightmare when a blood-drained body turns up on his doorstep.

Ian is a deep and compelling character. He quit forensic psychiatry due to his dangerous tendency to be attracted to the dark side, a weakness that is truly put to the test when he takes on the town's prime suspect, Alexandra Abrams, as his client. Alexandra is an eerie, ethereal woman who was previously acquitted of heinous crimes, but whom the public imagination has branded a literal vampire. The dynamics between the two are nothing short of spellbinding; she constantly challenges Ian’s professional distance and personal walls.

The murder mystery itself keeps the reader hooked from beginning to end. Although the book's conclusion is intentionally understated, prioritizing psychological realism over a massive, epic fantasy climax, it in no way diminishes this unique reading experience.

Moyer delivers a refreshingly original take on modern vampire fiction that beautifully blends the macabre with the heartfelt.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Joel Klein]

This novel is not subtle, and I mean that both as praise and warning.

Everything is turned up: Ian’s sarcasm, the eccentric patients, the bodily humor, the gothic imagery, the psychological messiness, the romantic tension, the chocolate motif, the murder investigation. There were moments when I thought, Surely we have reached maximum chaos, only for the following chapter to prove me hopelessly optimistic.

Oddly enough, what held the excess together for me was grief.

Ian is a psychiatrist trained to interpret other people, but he has arranged his own life so that very little ever requires him to confront himself. The contrast is obvious, perhaps intentionally so, but effective. His professional competence and private dysfunction constantly rub against each other.

I also appreciated how the novel plays with the idea of diagnosis. Ian wants explanations. Everyone around him wants explanations. The police want explanations. The public wants explanations.

The story keeps asking whether naming something actually means understanding it.

That interested me far more than the literal vampire question.

Not everything landed equally for me. Some jokes go on longer than I personally needed, and readers who prefer realism in depictions of psychiatric practice will probably have to loosen their grip considerably.

But I would take an unruly book with an unmistakable personality over another technically competent novel I forget in forty-eight hours.

I won’t forget this one.

[Ruby Harris]

No plot summary because frankly Goodreads reviews have become unpaid book reports and rebellion is necessary.

Here are the things that remain several days later:

The loneliness of an empty house.

Rollercoasters making enough noise to remind somebody other people are alive.

A person being so accustomed to pain that relief itself becomes suspicious.

A woman comforting someone she does not know.

People behaving absurdly because their needs are not absurd at all.

The ugly speed with which humiliation becomes entertainment once strangers discover it.

The possibility that there are worse things than being monstrous.

Like becoming convinced that everyone would be safer if you could cut the unacceptable parts out of yourself.

That last idea is where this book got me.

There are many louder things in the novel. Murder. Blood. Sex. Medical horror. Comedy. Possible vampirism.

But the quiet horror is shame.

And for all Ian’s jokes, his bizarre patients, the chocolate and the gothic theatrics, Abigail Moyer understands that shame can make ordinary people do extraordinary damage to themselves.

That is a far darker idea than fangs.

Excellent.

Weird as hell.

But excellent.

Loved it, Girl! Great characters, great story, and a really enjoyable read.

[Chhavi]

Outlier here:
Clearly this is going to be an unpopular opinion. And I even got an ARC of this book because the title and blurb seemed so very interesting.
Unfortunately, I'm DNF'ing it 25% of the way in. I'm sorry. I'm feeling bad about this. I feel like I could soldier through, even as my brain cells rebel and want to slowly kill themselves or overdose on bad chocolate (I don't eat most chocolate, hell I barely eat anything sweet) but ... I just don't want to. I feel like a tantrum coming on when I try to open this book again.

So ... our narrator, other people are finding him funny. I'm finding him, his chocolate addiction, his lack of boundaries, and his very flimsy attempts at therapy very, very disturbing.
Alexandra, FFS, really? I don't see electricity and kindness, I just see another disturbing mess that one should run away from. Thank god she's fictitious because there's no way I would want someone like that even as a former surgeon in a hospital in my vicinity.
Their burgeoning relationship gave me the ick. All that neck nibbling in the clinic ... nooooo!
And then I put this book away and felt, after lots of guilt, a rather lot more relief.
No, I felt no connection or investment in Ian's patients. I don't even care if the child was right about one of his patients being a vampire. I'm just done.

[SarahReads]

Just a few lines of note: "Maybe better to love a house cat than no one at all."

"The lampposts outside my window were shaped like aluminum-wrapped Hershey's Kisses. And the entire town smelled like milk chocolate."

"Not gothic, not emo, undead. She was a beautiful corpse, an apparition dressed in Gucci."

I mean, come on. The voice is insane. It's part murder mystery, part romance, with some insanely dark comedy thrown into the mix.

HARRY. The patient in love with his cat. I cannot explain Harry in a way that will make you understand why he is one of my favorite characters without just quoting the entire book at you, so you'll have to trust me.

I need someone to talk with me about Harry.

The cast of psychiatric patients in this is truly interesting. I found every character exciting, but they all tie into the plot in the end. I was worried it was going to be a bunch of patient vignettes, but Ian and Alexandra really do have a crazy deep conspiracy in Hershey happening here.

I wasn't really prepared for how emotional it all is. So I really need some time to think. But I really loved this.

Is it a vampire killing people? Is it Alexandra Abrams? All of that, and I really just care about Harry as a patient. Thanks. I ship Harry and Jennifer.

[Racheal Gilmore]

There were moments when Alexandra and Ian reminded me, strangely enough, of Hannibal.

Not in plot. Not in violence. And definitely not in tone because this book is about a thousand times sillier.

It's the psychological intimacy.

That unsettling feeling of two highly observant people looking at each other a little too closely.

Ian is accustomed to being the one who interprets. Patients sit opposite him, talk, reveal themselves, and he decides what the details mean. Then Alexandra arrives and starts reading him.

His body.

His pain.

His habits.

His avoidance.

The things he doesn't say.

That reversal gives their scenes a charge that goes beyond romance.

And much like Hannibal, there are moments where attraction, fear, curiosity, care and suspicion become difficult to separate. Except here somebody might ruin all that gothic intensity five minutes later with a joke about chocolate or a completely insane therapy session.

Which frankly made the whole thing more enjoyable for me.

The murder mystery kept the pages turning, but the real hook was watching Ian become progressively less capable of pretending he was an impartial observer.

A psychiatrist losing control of the narrative while still trying to diagnose everyone else?

Excellent.

[kbn1031]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of My Patients is a Vampire by Abigail Moyer

"She was pale like a vampire, but not in a sexy, glittering, glowing kind of way. She was pale in a corpse left out in the New Orleans sun with roaches and worms sort of way."

The cover and title of this one caught my eye. I started reading and immediately began highlighting passages. Once I got to the above quote on page 29, I knew that this one was going to be a 5⭐️ read for me. It's a weird, witty, gothic mystery/thriller full of dark humor, grief, and so many deeply flawed characters. But really, aren't we all? I figured out most of the twists before they were revealed (it's one of my character flaws 😬), but I was shocked by one of them. I'm not going to say anything else at all because you should totally go into this one, knowing as little as possible, and enjoy the ride.

I received an ARC of this book, but these opinions are my own. I would like to thank the author, Abigail Moyer, and Book Sirens for allowing me the privilege of reading her work. ❤️

One of My Patients is a Vampire by Abigail Moyer will be released on October 26th.

[Katarina]

** I received an advance review copy from Book Sirens for free; my review is my own, and I leave it voluntarily.

I love a good vampire book. Like, in any form: fantasy vampires, classic Dracula ones, even a good sci-fi - if it's got a vampire in it, even just as a concept - I'm here for it.

I was practically drooling when I first found this book. I don't usually read blurbs, but the cover was so pretty that I was intrigued and read this one. I immediately fell in love with the concept and knew I had to get my hands on a copy.

The execution was wonderful. There are so many directions a story like this could take, and I tried (and failed) to guess where it was heading. It takes you on an unpredictable ride that often feels like a fever dream, but in the best, most deliberate way. Around the halfway mark, I found myself genuinely confused, yet it never felt accidental-everything seemed carefully controlled.

Overall, this was a solid psychological thriller (more mystery/paranoia than traditional vampire fantasy), which I enjoyed very much.

[Willie Taylor]

I finished this at 1:17 a.m. and immediately went back to reread a few scenes because apparently sleep is less important than figuring out why a sarcastic psychiatrist in Hershey, Pennsylvania, has become one of my favorite fictional disasters.

That’s the review.

Okay, fine.

Ian Greyson is a psychiatrist. A weird kid tells him one of his patients is a vampire. A man turns up drained of blood. Ian starts looking at his patient list like it’s a suspect board.

Sounds ridiculous.

It IS ridiculous.

But it’s also sad as hell.

The thing that wrecked me wasn’t the murder mystery. It was Ian. This man has made an entire lifestyle out of functioning without actually living. His chronic pain, his grief, his rituals, his candy, his avoidance... all of it slowly stops being funny and starts feeling painfully human. He originally came to Hershey expecting to die, survived instead, and has basically been emotionally stuck there ever since.

Then Alexandra shows up and the whole book shifts temperature.

I’m not saying anything else.

Except: I understand, Ian.

I UNDERSTAND.

Very weird. Very funny. Occasionally gross. Emotionally invasive.

Five stars.

[Steph1216]

This book had me completely engaged from beginning to end; it starts as a dark comedy and turns into a suspenseful thriller. Ian Greyson is a therapist with some very unique patients and an interesting background. He was involved in a terrible accident decades ago that killed his fiancee and he hasn’t been with anyone since. Alexandra Abrams walks into his life one day and he’s drawn to her before he knows her history; she’s been acquitted of murder, she’s a mad, genius scientist and has a reputation that’s well known. Ian learns all about her and still wants her, despite everyone thinking they’re moral opposites. As Alexandra tries to piece her memory back together, she and Ian are puzzled by what may have been done to her by her previous doctors. She has strange tendencies and habits that sustain her health. What follows is a story that takes many twists and turns but never lets up on the laugh out loud humor. This was a very unique story and I was captivated until the end to see how the storylines would all play out. I received an ARC copy of this book and am leaving a review voluntarily.

[Ashe]

While I enjoyed this story overall, I just could not fully immerse myself into it. The plot felt a little frustrating at times, and the direction it went in felt a little too absurd for me to really fully get into it.

The characters were well developed, but the choices they made just left me feeling a bit confused. The main character did annoy me by the midway point; I just could not understand how as a psychiatrist he could make such strange choices, and not even use a little bit of his own advice? I understand the angle the author was going for, but I think they turned the dial a little too far.

I also felt the end lacked the impact I was seeking. I had so many questions, but I just didn't feel any catharsis, any satisfaction from the answers. I still don't fully understand the vampirism angle in this story; I feel it was too artificial for my tastes.

I think for me, this book just wasn't what I was expecting.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.