I loved the premise for Scarlet - take the French Revolution and add vampires to it seemed like a recipe for mayhem honestly. I'm not really familiar with The Scarlet Pimpernel besides the name (which I'd heard before) so I don't really know how well the retelling element of this compares to the original, but I was very curious about this anyway.

Eleanor, a maid working in the service of a vampire aristocrat in England, bears a striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette and so is recruited by the mysterious League of the Scarlet Pimpernel to embark on a dangerous journey to France, impersonate the Queen and rescue the royal family from their imprisonment at the hands of the revolutionaries before their encounter with the guillotine.

This felt like a fresh look at a very famous historical event, and I really appreciated the portrayal of aristocrats as vampires. This kind of reminded me of the film El Conde, which had a similar premise with respect to Chilean dictator Pinochet. There were plenty of scenes which allowed for deeper reflections on society, social order, freedom and justice, but also some good humour and tense moments.

I also liked Eleanor as the main character. She is a smart, strong-willed young woman who joins a truly dangerous mission to save a complete stranger - and a royal one at that - just because she feels it would be the right thing to do. She does come across as a bit too naive at times, but I enjoyed the way her character developed by the end even though there were a few times when her choices felt slightly at odds with what we know of her.

That being said, I wasn't wholly in love with this book, even though on paper it had everything I usually love. It felt very slow for the most part, and quite repetitive in certain sections. The fantasy element is also not fully explained or even used for most of the book... I guess I expected the vampires to play a bigger role in this. As this is the first book in a trilogy I do wonder if everything will make sense by the end, since a few times this book really just felt as if it were setting the scene for bigger things to come.

Overall, this was a pleasant and at times funny read with some interesting insights, but I didn't really vibe with it. It felt like a slog to get through the middle section and, by the end, I felt as though I hadn't had enough and yet there was suddenly too much going on. It could be that I just wasn't in the right mood for this though, and I can definitely see other people enjoying this one. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the next book in the series, although I might just to see if I can find what was missing in this one.

I received an advanced review copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.