Author: MaryJanice Davidson
Publisher: Penguin
Rating: WORTHY!
Here's an author not ashamed to have a dot net address, nor ashamed to have fun and poke fun. I normally detest vampire novels, but I couldn't resist this title! I got into this first volume (of what has become an extensive series) quite easily, and although I found some parts of it odd, I found most of it is very entertaining. The main protagonist is Elizabeth Taylor (no, not that Elizabeth Taylor), and her perspective on life is both feisty and amusing, as well as deliciously irreverent. She definitely has a peculiar PoV, and a distinct view of her place in life.
Or should I say: her place in death? One frosty night, she steps out to retrieve her cat from the middle of the street, whilst simultaneously forgetting to check for random vehicles sliding into her on the ice and propelling her into a tree. She wakes up in cheap clothes in her coffin and can't understand what happened; it's not so much the coffin which bothers her, but the cheap clothes...! At first, she thinks she's a zombie and tries to kill herself to complete her journey to Heaven. She fails. A little child leads her into the knowledge that she's actually a vampire, but she has a hard time accepting that because she shows none of the standard vampire allergies: to garlic, to churches, to holy water, to Christian crosses. She does have heightened senses, increased strength, and a great thirst, but she also controls that admirably.
She's infuriated that her detested stepmother stole her shoes and goes to retrieve them, thereby revealing to her family that she's a vampire. No one seems to think that's a big deal: not her father, nor her mother, who is living elsewhere, nor Jessica her best friend, who has bought her house and car and gifted them to Betsy so she can have a life. Or a death.
Betsy is lured out by a call from someone who seems to know all about her circumstances, and who promises to bring her up to speed on vampirism, but she's abducted before she can get there, and taken to the lair of "Nostro" in a cemetery, who is such a stereotype that she can't help but snort laugh after laugh at him. He's infuriated, but he can't stop her walking out. One of those who appeared to be in Nostro's crew, a tall handsome man by the name of Sinclair accosts her as she leaves, and though she finds him hot, she detests his behavior and throws him through a stone cross.... When Betsy gets cross, she really gets cross.
On her way home she encounters a suicidal doctor, Marc, about to pitch himself off a roof, so she tells him her story and talks him out of it. He promptly becomes her house-mate. It's supposed to be temporary while he finds himself a place to stay. Now we have all the trope demographics covered: Jessica is black and Marc is gay, while Sinclair, the buff vampire, is courting Betsy to garner her help in defeating the evil Nostro, and Betsy holds out until he gives her ten pairs of designer shoes, and then she's all in while still, er, keeping Sinclair out!
To cut a short story shorter (and not give away any more spoilers), I rate this a worthy read. Betsy is sneaky, sly, snarky, spunky, and hilarious. I love her attitude, and I enjoyed the plot. I plan on reading at least one more in this series to see how that goes, but I don't know if I'd want to read ten of these. That sounds like too much of a good thing.
