Vampire Weekend.

No, not "Vampire Weekend" the band, who I sort of like and sort of want to punch in the face. I'm having an undead moment and everything I want to read right now, maybe for the foreseeable future, is about those who returned from the grave. Maybe my own fear of dying is acting up, maybe my inherently gothish nature is trying to resurface through my earth-toned wardrobe. Maybe it is just the beginning of Fall, the perfect time to think about death and reaping and the possibility of rebirth/new life. You might have noticed from the EPIC review that this kick has already been going on for a while, ever since my obsessive reading of all the entries on the blog Vampirely.
Uninvited by Amanda Marrone


My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Jordan is a smart kid, she makes good grades even though her school attendance is sporadic at best. Her attendance problems and social anxiety were bad and are now terrible, because her ex-boyfriend, Michael, is a vampire whose haunting her every night. The vampire in this book follows very Dracula/folkloric traditional rules. Crosses and holy water, stakes through the heart are all going to hurt, he can turn into mist and bats. And he has to be invited in order to enter a building.

Gorgeous Michael, despite telling Jordan that he still loves her and begging her to let him come in, is no Edward Cullen. He's a monster, and Jordan determines that quite likely he always was. The day she broke up with him because of her social anxiety he hooked up with a cheerleader later that day. He hung out with jerks, he thought he was god's gift to everyone. This book, as much as it seems like it might about paranormal love paradoxes is really and truly about issues. Jordan has social anxiety, a completely unstructured life with parents so laid-back it is hard to tell if they even care, and to top it off she self-medicates with any substance she can get ahold of...booze, coke, etc. Her friends Jordan's life has gotten so bad that she's starting to wonder if maybe she shouldn't just let Michael in. One of her three friends in the world is actually someone she truly likes, but they all feed her dysfunctions. I like the way Jordan goes from letting her issues get the best of her to getting the best of them, and her blood-sucking ex-boyfriend.

I love the way that the creepy manipulations of Michael and his overuse of the word "Love" actually comes off as creepy and horrible, instead of Twilight-esque sparkly vampire love manipulations. Really I was a little pleased and surprised by the directions this book took, and even though it was slow in parts (how many examples of vomiting from excessive substance abuse do you really need?), I'm glad I stuck it through.

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Later I will probably update you all about the second Generation Dead novel "Kiss of Life" which corrected what I didn't like about book one and was actually really a great sequel! Hooray! And, tonight I've got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Silver Kiss and Vampire Academy and so much other paranormal stuff to read that I could cry in relief that is going to be all vampires all the time on my days off of work. Now if Rachel at Vampirely would just update, my vampire weekend will be complete.