re3 - Soulless

I'm not sure what made me desperately wanted to reread the first book in the Parasol Protectorate, Soulless, by Gail Carriger. It's been on my mind that I wanted to reread it for the last year or two but I seem to become desperate to find time to reread this and see if it was as fun as when I first read this back in 2013 (I had to backtrack through the blog to double check my dates but yes, I first read this nearly ten years ago!)

So, for those of you curious, Soulless is set in an alternative, steampunk London where vampires, werewolves and Alexia Tarabotti exist. Alexia Tarabotti has no soul - literally, though you wouldn't see it. All you would see is a spinster with Italian blood and speaks her mind. How very unladylike. 

But when Alexia is attacked by a vampire and accidentally kills it, breaking all social etiquette, she thinks it can't get worse. Boy oh, it does, as the handsome, gruff (and Alpha werewolf) Lord Maccon is sent to investigate by Queen Victoria. 

For you see, vampires are disappearing and new, rogue vampires are appearing. For some reason that no one seems to understand, Alexia keeps herself in trouble because of it. Something is afoot and whether Lord Maccon wants her help or not, Alexia is going to get to the bottom of it with her trusty brass parasol and a good cup of tea.

Now, when I first read this back in 2013, I loved it. I had an utter blast with it. I was on holiday with my holiday in Center Parcs and it was perfect holiday reading. It was fun, the humour was on point, the chemistry between the leads made me very happy and I couldn't read the book fast enough. I enjoyed myself so much, I bought the second book in the series before I even finished Soulless (I haven't read book two, Changeless, as my TBR is never going to go down!). And after a summer where my reading has been so erratic and I was in a reading slump or on the verge of one, I hope this would be as fun as before. 

And it was. Up to a point. It was fun and I did enjoy myself. But I didn't enjoy myself as much as I hoped. Plus, at times, I wasn't exactly feeling the humour or the romance. 

I think the problem was is, if you reread something that you read and loved years ago and then you read it now, your reactions are going to go one of two ways: you will love it and feel the same now as you did then, or you're going to be disappointed. That's why there's a few books on my kindle that I want to reread but I don't know if they're going to stand up now. 

Maybe that's because I've grown as a reader. Maybe it's because I've grown as a person and elements that I didn't understand fully back then, I know more now. Plus, attitudes change which brings the stories into new lights - some more positive, some more negative. 

With this, I think I hyped it up in my head and my growth as a person/reader has changed. But yeah, I hyped it up in my head. I do have Changeless on my kindle's TBR so I am going to read that in the next few months (though I have been saying this for YEARS now), but not sure whether I will continue as am hearing very mixed things about the later books in this series. We shall see...