Review: Before the Dawn by David Crane

A multilayered piece of fantasy that plays with horror and thriller tropes, Before the Dawn by David Crane is a vivid and intense novel with a long list of memorable characters. This ingenious book will give readers a taste of a wholly original vampire universe – a wonderful example of world-building that surprises, moves, and prompts the reader to think about our everyday world.

In a cold New York that is both dangerous and mundane, Cindy and Frank get to know each other at night. Cindy, a 150-year-old vampire that is stuck forever at the age of thirteen, and Frank, a human boy, can only get to know each other between sunset and sunrise, while New York is writhing with criminal life that they are destined to fight, as Cindy is in touch with the darkest secrets of the city and has a flair for fighting criminals. In this nocturnal atmosphere, Crane masterfully places his story full of love, peril, and action, with unforgettable details about both vampires and city life.

Frank is a young boy from a middle-class family grappling with his first love and bullies at school. Just when he manages to ask out the girl he has been dreaming about for months, he meets an incredible and mysterious girl in a comic bookstore, with pale skin and magnetic green eyes that seem to belong to someone much older and wiser. Cindy and Frank become very close, but his girlfriend Amy breaks up with him thinking his friendship with Cindy is akin to cheating.

After this traumatic beginning, Cindy and Frank start to really fall in love, and Cindy is even thinking of making Frank one of her “donors” – humans who make a blood pact with a vampire, offering them their blood freely in exchange of unconditional love, companionship, and protection. As her other donor and best friend Jennifer is kidnapped by a sex-trafficking criminal gang, she also needs his help and support to get her back home, for a teen adventure that is decidedly dark.

Crane’s style is direct and conversational without missing out on beautifully written, lyrical passages. He masterfully switches between Cindy’s and Frank’s points of view, making us feel close to both of them and giving us the opportunity to peer into his perfectly conceived vampire world, giving vampires a civilized and articulated society that elevates them far above traditional villains. We identify with Cindy and her nocturnal existence, full of delightful details about her daily life, while we also empathize with Frank’s everyday human concerns, and feel with increasing anticipation the inevitable shock when Cindy reveals her true nature to him.

While sometimes the line between good and evil can feel a bit cut-and-dry, this works in the grand scheme of the book, and doesn’t affect the story’s overall sense of nuanced complexity. Chilling, tender, and memorable, Before the Dawn is a captivating read for fans of dark and action-lead fiction that also has a reflective side, managing to take the crowded vampire genre in a new direction.