Castle of the Cursed vs. The Immortal Dark

Remember back in the roaring tenties, aka the 2010s, when two movies would come out and it was like...I mean, these are two versions of the same movie, did one studio pass and then steal the idea while another studio picked up the original? You know what I'm talking about, right? Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman - retellings, but still, same year? No Strings Attached, featuring Natalie Portman and famed rapist-apologist Ashton Kutcher, and Friends with Benefits, featuring dumpster fires Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake? (Per the IMDB trivia, NSA actually tried to title their movie FWB when their original title was rejected and couldn't because...you know, a movie with that exact title and the same plot was coming out a handful of months later...)

Anyhow, I guess this is a thing, they're called Twin Films, movies with similar plots coming out at similar times, which usually would get flagged but every once in a while slips through the cracks. This happens with books too, obviously, and while I always really enjoy reading a book and being like heyyyy I've read something similar to this before, this time I happened to read both books at exactly the same time, and it was a really interesting experience for me so I figured hey, why not blog about it. And here we are.

For starters, personally? These book covers are different variations on the same theme. Similar vibes.

Also, there's an orphaned main character who has lost the last of their known family due to mysterious and probably nefarious circumstances. Both, mostly unwillingly, take a journey to live at a place they find distasteful with an aunt they don't know and don't trust, where both end up allied (tenuously?) with a vampire. Both have lost their native tongue and attempt to relearn it. Both discover their families have complex, mysterious, and dark legacies. Both protagonists are dealing with mental health stuff, with PTSD in the forefront of that stuff.

There's more, but to be honest I thought I had finished this review days ago and foolishly didn't make any notes, so a lot of the more nuanced stuff I'm having trouble remembering and a lot of the less nuanced stuff is spoilers. So I'll just say, interesting experience reading two books that are so similar in overarching plot yet so different in storytelling style. If a person could only read one and asked me for a recommendation, I would say go with Castle of the Cursed if you like things that are mysterious, slightly creepy, but also relatively straightforward when it comes to worldbuilding. Go with The Immortal Dark if you like much more complex, lore-heavy stuff where the book is as much about building the world as it is about advancing the plot.