Another One Bites the Dust - Vocal Adrenaline (Glee)

The Reformed Vampire Support Group

Author: Catherine Jinks
Pages: 362
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Brief Summary:
Nina spends her nights writing fictional stories about a sexy vampire heroine, Zadia Bloodstone. She spends her days in a sleep like death in her mom's basement. Because she actually is a vampire. Unfortunately, being a vampire is not at all like being in Twilight or being Zadia Bloodstone. Mostly, you're helpless and hungry and sick all the time. Plus, Nina doesn't really like anyone else in her support group, well, except maybe for Dave. They are all united in their curse, inherited either directly or indirectly from one vampire, Casimir, and all determined not to drink from a human again. When Casimir is found dead, a little pile of dust, the group will have to find strength, motivation and liveliness they didn't know they still had.

Review:
I have been looking forward to reading this book for a while, especially so since I saw the cover for the companion novel, The Abandoned Werewolf Support Group. I expected Catherine Jinks to be really funny, and hoped that this would be a good readalike for S. G. Browne's Breathers (which deals with zombies). Very much to my disappointment, it was not.

The main problem is that Jinks goes too far in her attempt to deromanticize vampires. She wants to make them everything that's unlikable, pretty much. They're lazy, slow, stupid, boring and not attractive. Well, she succeeded in not making them Twilightish, but she also succeeded in making them not at all interesting. I didn't give a damn about any of the characters, except maybe Dave, because they were all of the things previously mentioned.

Plus, I did not much appreciate the constant references to guinea pig nomming. I mean, once, fine, but every time someone needs a little pick me up? And, here's some advice, Jinks: saying that you'll spare the audience a description of the gory happenings is the same as describing it. This is a perfect example of how something was supposed to be both funny and off-putting, but only managed the latter.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group fell completely flat. It was a struggle to read from the first pages to the last. I am not giving up on Jinks yet, but only because I already have copies of two more of her books to read. I hope, for my sake, that the others are better.

P.S. For today's song, I couldn't resist the pun about a vampire's death. Plus, the cover by Vocal Adrenaline was pretty much awful, much like this book. Good idea, oh so badly executed.

"Another one bites the dust"