The Last Vampire

• Author: Romina Garber
• Genre: YA Romantasy
• Publication Date: December 2, 2025
• Publisher: Wednesday Books

Thank you to NetGalley, Wednesday Books, and Recorded Books for providing me with an ARC of this book (and audiobook) in exchange for an honest review.

Pride & Prejudice meets Crave when Austen-loving Lorena Navarro attends a new boarding school expecting to find her own Mr. Darcy, but accidentally finds the world’s last vampire instead!

Pride comes before the fall.

When a boarding school opens in a once-condemned Victorian manor buried in the woods of New Hampshire, Austen-loving Lorena Navarro enrolls in hopes of finding her own Mr. Darcy. Instead, she stumbles across a coffin and accidentally awakens the world’s last vampire.

After hibernating for nearly three centuries, William Pride is desperate to find his family—and clueless about the modern world. Relying on Lorena for more than just blood, he enrolls at the school to catch up on all he’s missed.

Soon, William uncovers a chilling truth: He is the last hope for his kind’s return to power. Torn between protecting the humans around him and fulfilling his fate, William must make a choice that could change everything. Will he sacrifice his species for love . . . or will he embrace his dark destiny at last?

I’ve been a fan of Romina Garber since I was introduced to Lobizona in 2020. I fell in love with her writing, and she’s one of those auto-read authors for me. I’ve read each new book, some as ARCs, and this was no different. Despite the fact that I’ve been reading much less YA literature lately, I’ll head right back into the YA shelves for Romina Garber’s writing, along with a few other authors. 

She tries her hand at one of my favorite tropes—dark academia. I haven’t read either Pride & Prejudice or Crave, but there’s a heavy emphasis on literature in the curious new boarding school that the female MC attends. Created from a dilapidated Victorian manor, the school has a gothic vibe and this is the first year it is open, and only includes the senior class to start. Obviously setting a school in a restored manor in rural New Hampshire is going to come with some snags—namely some areas of the manor are off limits due to not being restored yet, and the campus doesn’t have any cell phone reception or WiFi, leaving the students forced to use *gasp* landline phones. This also forces the students to actually interact, since they can’t resort to scrolling on social media or texting.

Lorena Navarro is the daughter of a mom influencer, and we get to see a bit about how this has affected her. Growing up with a very strict parent who broadcasts her parenting strategies on social media, a photo of Lorena at a party holding a drink in one hand and a bong in the other has tarnished her mother’s influencer career. When Lorena gets to the boarding school, it is the first time she has experienced freedom, and like most teenagers, she makes some short-sighted decisions, but mainly has her head on straight. She’s reasonable, kind, smart, and curious, and I think I liked her best when she was debating different literature classics in class with William, including Pride and Prejudice and Dracula.

The character growth arc for Lorena is fantastic. I loved revisiting the process of discovering who we really are once we are away from home by watching Lorena figure out who and what she wants to be, while maintaining her values and morals. She’s a strong character driven by what she believes is right, and she is lucky enough to go to the boarding school with her best friend, Salma. There are some ups and downs in the friendship, which is similar to how some people drift a bit from old friends when changing to a more independent situation. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but having Salma around in a new setting does have an effect on the dynamic.

More importantly, while exploring forbidden areas of the manor on the first night of school, they find a room with some interesting finds, including a hidden library and a vampire in a coffin. William has been in stasis for almost 300 years, in a state known as death-sleep. The scent of blood awakens him, only to quickly discover that the world has changed so much it is unrecognizable to him. He realizes that he needs help, both with obtaining blood and learning how to navigate this new, high-tech world, and he takes Lorena on as his familiar. But she’s a bit more sassy and demanding than he expects, and doesn’t know much about vampires. 

I loved that Garber didn’t lean heavily on the established vampire tropes, making this into a fresh, intriguing story. When William was put in death-sleep, vampires were known and accepted in society. However, vampire history has completely been erased and humans are left ignorant. William doesn’t encounter any other vampires, and is left to wonder if he’s the last vampire in the world. His character growth is also fantastic here—he moves from having a vague disdain of humans to empathizing with them and learning to understand them, which influences the choices he makes. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. The characters were complex and realistic for the most part (unless vampires actually are real), and it was so easy to throw myself into this reading. Just as I reached the halfway point, I got approved for the audiobook version as well, and switched to that so I could continue reading even when driving. That’s how invested I got in this story, although there were some parts that were unevenly paced. These sections often involve deep thinking and internal monologues that I felt stopped the action in the story, and were slower paced. However, this didn’t really take away from my enjoyment of the book, which was wonderful. This is a romantasy to check out if you like vampire stories.

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