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One of My Patients is a Vampire: A Novel
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?
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?
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First published October 26, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
Review of advance copy
This was a strange, original,and gripping book. The mystery kept me turning pages as the story progressed. It had moments of humor, romance, intrigue, and morally challenged characters. The story was compelling from start to finish. Thank you, BookSirens, for my copy.
August 3, 2026
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.
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.
August 1, 2026
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
No favorite quote.
No favorite trope.
No “perfect for fans of.”
No explanation of the plot.
Only this:
The funniest books are dangerous when they understand sadness.
This one does.
No favorite trope.
No “perfect for fans of.”
No explanation of the plot.
Only this:
The funniest books are dangerous when they understand sadness.
This one does.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Ian: “I am a highly educated psychiatrist.”
Also Ian: makes approximately every emotionally questionable decision available to him.
Me: understandable, carry on.
Loved this.
Also Ian: makes approximately every emotionally questionable decision available to him.
Me: understandable, carry on.
Loved this.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
What fascinated me most was the setting.
Hershey is almost comically wrong for a gothic story, which makes it perfect.
Chocolate-shaped imagery, amusement rides, bright commercial sweetness, candy everywhere... and beneath it, blood, death, trauma, medical uncertainty and people who cannot trust their own memories.
That contrast gives the novel a peculiar atmosphere I haven’t encountered before.
Ian himself belongs in that contradiction. He is funny but miserable. Caring but judgmental. Highly educated but frequently oblivious. Alive but, emotionally, not particularly committed to the concept.
Moyer lets sweetness become unsettling.
Chocolate is comfort until it isn’t.
Touch is comforting until it raises questions.
Medical knowledge is reassuring until knowledge itself becomes suspect.
The more I read, the more the vampire premise began to feel almost secondary to the novel’s real preoccupation: the instability of interpretation.
What do we see when we look at another person?
What were we already expecting to see?
And once someone has been declared dangerous, strange, mentally ill or monstrous, can we ever look at their behavior neutrally again?
That is where this became genuinely compelling for me.
A peculiar, messy, surprisingly thoughtful gothic novel wearing a very mischievous title.
Hershey is almost comically wrong for a gothic story, which makes it perfect.
Chocolate-shaped imagery, amusement rides, bright commercial sweetness, candy everywhere... and beneath it, blood, death, trauma, medical uncertainty and people who cannot trust their own memories.
That contrast gives the novel a peculiar atmosphere I haven’t encountered before.
Ian himself belongs in that contradiction. He is funny but miserable. Caring but judgmental. Highly educated but frequently oblivious. Alive but, emotionally, not particularly committed to the concept.
Moyer lets sweetness become unsettling.
Chocolate is comfort until it isn’t.
Touch is comforting until it raises questions.
Medical knowledge is reassuring until knowledge itself becomes suspect.
The more I read, the more the vampire premise began to feel almost secondary to the novel’s real preoccupation: the instability of interpretation.
What do we see when we look at another person?
What were we already expecting to see?
And once someone has been declared dangerous, strange, mentally ill or monstrous, can we ever look at their behavior neutrally again?
That is where this became genuinely compelling for me.
A peculiar, messy, surprisingly thoughtful gothic novel wearing a very mischievous title.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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!
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!
Review of advance copy
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.
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.
Review of advance copy
Y’all, One of My Patients Is a Vampire is a quirky gothic mystery with teeth! 🧛 When a blood-drained body appears at psychiatrist Ian Greyson’s door, his eerie patient Alexandra becomes the prime suspect.
Abigail Moyer’s writing is witty, atmospheric, and deliciously strange. Ian’s dry humor adds plenty of sass, and all that Hershey, PA talk had me craving chocolate! A clever four-star treat with bite! 🍫🩸
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Abigail Moyer’s writing is witty, atmospheric, and deliciously strange. Ian’s dry humor adds plenty of sass, and all that Hershey, PA talk had me craving chocolate! A clever four-star treat with bite! 🍫🩸
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Goodreads Giveaways
Big thanks for the early review copy. However, this was not for me.
The book came with some herseys bars, and i thought it was just a kind gesture. Little did i know it was a hint to what's to come. You could be mistaken that the author has stocks in Nestle and Herseys the way every chapter mentions candy like an unskippable ad. The premise in the title was engaging, and I initially enjoyed the mystery of the would be vampire, but the world became silly in that the characters felt like caricatures, and all the patients were sexual deviants, so distracting i had to pull out a KitKat™ to ease my nerves. Lol
The book came with some herseys bars, and i thought it was just a kind gesture. Little did i know it was a hint to what's to come. You could be mistaken that the author has stocks in Nestle and Herseys the way every chapter mentions candy like an unskippable ad. The premise in the title was engaging, and I initially enjoyed the mystery of the would be vampire, but the world became silly in that the characters felt like caricatures, and all the patients were sexual deviants, so distracting i had to pull out a KitKat™ to ease my nerves. Lol
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
I'm blinking, staring blankly, pondering my life choices about how much I loved this book.
I LOVED IT.
The setup sounds like a bit. A psychiatrist in Hershey pennsylvania, possible vampire, murder mystery next to a Walmart — and it IS funny, like actually funny not just 'quirky' funny. But about a third of the way through, something shifted, and I realized this was not the book I thought I was reading.
It is romantic. It is thought-provoking, asking what it means to be a monster, a vampire, or sick? Is anyone really diagnosable? And the mystery/thriller pushed it all along as the engine.
I read several reviews here contemplating Ian and whether he is self-centered or whether his flaws are understandable given he is a psychiatrist. Weirdly, this is what I liked about him. The irony of a psychiatrist struggling with his own mental illness is both real and poignant. I found him hurt and broken rather than self-centered, and the novel makes it clear he cares deeply about his patients despite his mistakes.
Alexandra herself is one of the more interesting romantic leads I've come across recently. She is guarded in ways that feel psychologically true rather than narratively convenient, and the slow process of Ian earning her openness is as compelling as the reverse. Their dynamic avoids the usual push-pull mechanics because both of them are too tired and too smart for games. They just keep finding each other anyway.
The scene I keep returning to is the Monster Mash scene. Ian is in Alexandra's kitchen having a breakdown over years of accumulated sadness and suddenly we flash back to his New York apartment in the nineties — his fiance dancing in vampire fangs, the Manhattan skyline blue through the windows. It is such a beautiful scene (emotional and pretty spicy).
Go in knowing it has weight to it. Despite the title, this is a lot more than vampire pulp.
Thank you to Visage and Edelweiss for the ARC.
I LOVED IT.
The setup sounds like a bit. A psychiatrist in Hershey pennsylvania, possible vampire, murder mystery next to a Walmart — and it IS funny, like actually funny not just 'quirky' funny. But about a third of the way through, something shifted, and I realized this was not the book I thought I was reading.
It is romantic. It is thought-provoking, asking what it means to be a monster, a vampire, or sick? Is anyone really diagnosable? And the mystery/thriller pushed it all along as the engine.
I read several reviews here contemplating Ian and whether he is self-centered or whether his flaws are understandable given he is a psychiatrist. Weirdly, this is what I liked about him. The irony of a psychiatrist struggling with his own mental illness is both real and poignant. I found him hurt and broken rather than self-centered, and the novel makes it clear he cares deeply about his patients despite his mistakes.
Alexandra herself is one of the more interesting romantic leads I've come across recently. She is guarded in ways that feel psychologically true rather than narratively convenient, and the slow process of Ian earning her openness is as compelling as the reverse. Their dynamic avoids the usual push-pull mechanics because both of them are too tired and too smart for games. They just keep finding each other anyway.
The scene I keep returning to is the Monster Mash scene. Ian is in Alexandra's kitchen having a breakdown over years of accumulated sadness and suddenly we flash back to his New York apartment in the nineties — his fiance dancing in vampire fangs, the Manhattan skyline blue through the windows. It is such a beautiful scene (emotional and pretty spicy).
Go in knowing it has weight to it. Despite the title, this is a lot more than vampire pulp.
Thank you to Visage and Edelweiss for the ARC.
September 7, 2026
I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded fun and weird and completely up my alley, but I just couldn’t get there.
For a mystery, I never felt much suspense. I had predicted the majority of what was happening within the first 40–50 pages, and rather than making me curious about how everything would come together, I mostly found myself waiting for the characters to catch up.
My bigger issue was that there were too many moments where I found myself asking wait, why is this happening? without ever getting a satisfying answer.
There were things I liked. The premise is bizarre in a good way, there’s some great dark humor, and I think the story had a ton of potential.
Ultimately, the execution just didn’t come together for me. I wanted more suspense, stronger connections between the characters and their actions, and answers to some of the questions the story raised.
For a mystery, I never felt much suspense. I had predicted the majority of what was happening within the first 40–50 pages, and rather than making me curious about how everything would come together, I mostly found myself waiting for the characters to catch up.
My bigger issue was that there were too many moments where I found myself asking wait, why is this happening? without ever getting a satisfying answer.
There were things I liked. The premise is bizarre in a good way, there’s some great dark humor, and I think the story had a ton of potential.
Ultimately, the execution just didn’t come together for me. I wanted more suspense, stronger connections between the characters and their actions, and answers to some of the questions the story raised.
Review of advance copy
I found the story too hard to follow and I was unable to cypher who was who and all characters I found confusing. I felt the story was very slow and I really wasn’t sure on which characters were supposed to assist each other. They all seemed to be crazy. I would give more stars if I was able to understand who the characters are and what they are like. Also if there’s a proper story line
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review of advance copy
With Spooky month upon us, this looked like it would be a great read in the lead up to Halloween, so I was delighted to receive an advance copy of this book from Booksirens. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Dr Ian Greyson is a burnt out psychiatrist wondering quite how he ended up here with problem families and a young patient madly in love with his cat, freshly escaped from a day of some mildly troubling therapy sessions at his strip-mall practice in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He's minding his own business doing a quick circuit of Walmart, when he's approached by a small child, sucking a lollipop, who tells him purposefully 'One of your patients is a vampire'.
Amused but generally unbothered by this, putting it down to an overactive imagination and a touch of devilment, Ian continues on his way. However, when people start turning up drained of blood he has a niggling feeling that the kid might just have been onto something. Enter with precision timing, new patient Alexandra Abrams, an unnerving women with an exceptionally troubling past, a penchant for colbalt blue coats, and… is that blood on her lip Ian can see?
This is a book quite unlike any I've read before; a novel novel, if you will.
The best thing about this book for me was the writing. Rapier sharp, witty, and genuinely made me laugh out loud a few times and the opening line ("I do not condone killing your children.") was what drew me in to the book in the first place. The premise was brilliant, but I felt the story was a bit disjointed as we went past the first half and I started to get a bit lost in the plot. I found the repeated descriptions of Alexandra's clothes, body and expressions a bit wearing, and I don't know how many times the words 'blue coat' and 'a flash of blue' (or words to that effect and KitKat were mentioned, but it was a few too many for me, made me feel like I was being led to notice something. I knew something was going on but the author did well at keeping me distracted enough to not figure out too soon what that was (I usually guess very early on!).
So this book gets a 3.5 star rating for me. I absolutely know that this will be a 5-star read for lots of people, and I wish the author every success with it. As I said earlier in my review Abigail has an excellent writing style, it's just that the deeper I got into the plot, it didn't click too well with me. I did enjoy reading it though, and would read this author again.
Dr Ian Greyson is a burnt out psychiatrist wondering quite how he ended up here with problem families and a young patient madly in love with his cat, freshly escaped from a day of some mildly troubling therapy sessions at his strip-mall practice in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He's minding his own business doing a quick circuit of Walmart, when he's approached by a small child, sucking a lollipop, who tells him purposefully 'One of your patients is a vampire'.
Amused but generally unbothered by this, putting it down to an overactive imagination and a touch of devilment, Ian continues on his way. However, when people start turning up drained of blood he has a niggling feeling that the kid might just have been onto something. Enter with precision timing, new patient Alexandra Abrams, an unnerving women with an exceptionally troubling past, a penchant for colbalt blue coats, and… is that blood on her lip Ian can see?
This is a book quite unlike any I've read before; a novel novel, if you will.
The best thing about this book for me was the writing. Rapier sharp, witty, and genuinely made me laugh out loud a few times and the opening line ("I do not condone killing your children.") was what drew me in to the book in the first place. The premise was brilliant, but I felt the story was a bit disjointed as we went past the first half and I started to get a bit lost in the plot. I found the repeated descriptions of Alexandra's clothes, body and expressions a bit wearing, and I don't know how many times the words 'blue coat' and 'a flash of blue' (or words to that effect and KitKat were mentioned, but it was a few too many for me, made me feel like I was being led to notice something. I knew something was going on but the author did well at keeping me distracted enough to not figure out too soon what that was (I usually guess very early on!).
So this book gets a 3.5 star rating for me. I absolutely know that this will be a 5-star read for lots of people, and I wish the author every success with it. As I said earlier in my review Abigail has an excellent writing style, it's just that the deeper I got into the plot, it didn't click too well with me. I did enjoy reading it though, and would read this author again.
October 28, 2026
This is one of the most original, well-written books I’ve read. The story follows our MMC, Dr. Ian Greyson a forensic psychiatrist who has found himself living a ho-hum existence in his sixties. He’s running a practice out of a strip mall next to a Walmart and across from the Hersheypark theme park in Hershey, Pennsylvania. His patients vary in age and affliction; most notably a mother-daughter duo (although he doesn’t see them at the same time). After a brief and gross encounter with the aforementioned mother, he finds himself in an aisle at Walmart looking for sanitizer/cleaner. He’s approached by a random kid with a lollipop who tells him, “one of your patients is a vampire” with zero context and then disappears. Thinking it’s just the cherry on top of a crappy, strange day Ian doesn’t think much of it. Until a body is found outside his practice exsanguinated. Blood is drained from the victim and no other marks or bruises on the body except for two tiny punctures on the person’s neck. Enter the stunningly beautiful Dr. Alexandra Abrams. She’s elegant, intelligent, and drop-dead gorgeous. And she wants Ian to take her on as a patient. He soon finds out she’s previously been accused of murder. Oh man! Does this mean she’s the vampire the “random creepy Walmart kid” was talking about? This tale is full of characters that are so brilliantly created that it was like reading a movie. Moyer weaves the storyline so seamlessly that the lines get blurred as to who’s the hero and the villain. Crude humor with lines like, “Or is Science your god? Pray to Pfizer and Percocet. They’ll save ya Doc! Don’t worry!” mingle with scenes of longing and compassion. The Hershey Park and it’s various candies (KitKats in particular) play a supporting background role. Original and certainly one of a kind, the plot twist had me rethinking every opinion I’d formed about the entire story and left me flabbergasted. Worth the read/listen. 5/5 Stars.
November 3, 2026
What an absolutely positive surprise of a smash. Abigail Moyer stumbled into my stream with this cover, a title that grabs, and a description that tugged on an itch in between a couple of recent reads. .. and, took hold of my attention, wouldn't let go-- even when pages closed and on hold for me to go to work and do some chores :) ... and turned itself, page after quickly-flipping page, into one of the best reads I've been lucky to enjoy this year.
Didn't expect that! But.. that's what it is :)
Weird, quirky, sarcastic, emotive, urgent, mystery, a hot mess of unbelievable things. characters that you can't believe, but also can't help but hope and root and shiver for.
So many times and moments where you can't help but pause and wonder 'what the crap?!" and "oh no!" and.. "please! no.. yes... oh.. whoa"
Not one usually for romance.. and yet, this one.. whew. Had me hooked. and a terrific balance of so many things.
Can't do it the justice that One of My Patients is a Vampire deserves.
Can't quite believe the impact that all of these people had on me. and their convoluted issues. Comically unreal.. and one of those, so-wrong-it-has-to-be-real string of things :)
Adding Moyer to my shortlist of watching for what/all else she might dream up to share with us.
Don't miss this one. You can thank me later :)
Didn't expect that! But.. that's what it is :)
Weird, quirky, sarcastic, emotive, urgent, mystery, a hot mess of unbelievable things. characters that you can't believe, but also can't help but hope and root and shiver for.
So many times and moments where you can't help but pause and wonder 'what the crap?!" and "oh no!" and.. "please! no.. yes... oh.. whoa"
Not one usually for romance.. and yet, this one.. whew. Had me hooked. and a terrific balance of so many things.
Can't do it the justice that One of My Patients is a Vampire deserves.
Can't quite believe the impact that all of these people had on me. and their convoluted issues. Comically unreal.. and one of those, so-wrong-it-has-to-be-real string of things :)
Adding Moyer to my shortlist of watching for what/all else she might dream up to share with us.
Don't miss this one. You can thank me later :)
October 31, 2026
I slogged through every page of this unrelenting ARC handed out at the ALS 2026 conference so I feel obligated to provide an honest assessment, especially considering that “Goodreads campaign” boasts its very own line item on the Marketing Campaign section on the back cover (separate from “Bookstagram/Booktok Influencer Outreach, mind you). One of My Patients is a Vampire offers downright awful writing, surface-level characters, wet fart after wet fart of attempted shock factor, and a plot so stupid I truly cannot wrap my head around how the author possibly stretched this out to more than 300 pages. Maybe they found some kind of miracle worker to zhuzh this manuscript before the official publication went to print, but even so this book’s got flimsy bones. Take a shot every time you read:
* unconfident descriptors: “ he/she was almost (adjective)”
* “Cranberry Chutney Yankee Candle”
* “Tic Tac Big Pack Fruit Adventure”
* “KitKat Bar”
* “golden eyeshadow”
* “blood orange” -or- “orange blossom” (the only two citrus fragrances)
* a sentence beginning with “And”
* a sentence beginning with “But”
* a four-words-or-fewer sentence
* unconfident descriptors: “ he/she was almost (adjective)”
* “Cranberry Chutney Yankee Candle”
* “Tic Tac Big Pack Fruit Adventure”
* “KitKat Bar”
* “golden eyeshadow”
* “blood orange” -or- “orange blossom” (the only two citrus fragrances)
* a sentence beginning with “And”
* a sentence beginning with “But”
* a four-words-or-fewer sentence
November 2, 2026
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting my next favorite patient to have fangs! That wasn't on my bingo card this year haha. It was incredibly and wonderfully entertaining to take an ordinary medical setting and throw a vampire into the mix, and this book had me hooked on the premise from the get-go. One of My Patients is a Vampire was such a fun and entertaining read. I loved the unusual premise, the mix of humor and supernatural elements, and the way the story kept me curious about what would happen next. It has that quirky charm that makes it easy to get swept up in the pages, and I found myself genuinely enjoying the ride.
Did Not Finish
October 30, 2026I'm confused by this book - Ian's internal monologue kept flipping from male to female that I struggled to follow...
Maybe I'll try again next October...
Maybe I'll try again next October...
November 6, 2026
For those of you who don’t know, I rarely give five stars. This book was so good - so many twists and turns, definitely not what I was expecting in the best of ways. Highly, highly recommend.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
I found an ARC in my Little Free Library and the title intrigued me so I grabbed it for myself. But this book is bad. I’m giving it 2 stars instead of one because it’s comically bad so I actually finished it. But it’s so, so bad.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book is plotty and punchy and so much fun. But this book also deals with grief in a way that snuck up on me completely, and I got a lot more than I initially expected with the title 'One of My Patients is a Vampire.'
The opening dark satire remains through the book and it definitely has the fast moving plot, and it is a LOT emotionally. The cat is there. The fun is there. What I was not prepared for was Moyer manages to get to a certain kind of emotion that is really specific and it made me feel things.
Ian's particular brand of loss hit differently than I expected, and it felt entirely unique.
I think this is a very good book. I think the writing is sharp and the characters are real. Ian and Sarah's session near the end is some of the loveliest writing.
Highly Recommended with the warning that this book will find whatever you are quietly having feelings about and dredge it up.
Thank you to Visage for the ARC.
The opening dark satire remains through the book and it definitely has the fast moving plot, and it is a LOT emotionally. The cat is there. The fun is there. What I was not prepared for was Moyer manages to get to a certain kind of emotion that is really specific and it made me feel things.
Ian's particular brand of loss hit differently than I expected, and it felt entirely unique.
I think this is a very good book. I think the writing is sharp and the characters are real. Ian and Sarah's session near the end is some of the loveliest writing.
Highly Recommended with the warning that this book will find whatever you are quietly having feelings about and dredge it up.
Thank you to Visage for the ARC.
August 23, 2026
I went into this story expecting more of a psychological thriller however the story is closer to a gothic horror. I wanted to like the main characters but I found it difficult to relate to them or really care much about them. Dr Greyson came across as the wunderkind of forensic psychology and slowly you realize just how mentally damaged he is and shouldn’t be practising psychiatry. He crosses ethical boundaries so much it’s difficult to keep track of which patients he is actually helping and which he’s enabling. The story itself is quite interesting but it just doesn’t live up to its potential.
Received from BookSirens for an honest review.
Received from BookSirens for an honest review.
Review of advance copy
lol this story was wild. This was so much fun and so filled with mystery and suspense. I loved the storyline and everything that took place. I had an absolute blast with this one.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
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