Rating: WARTY!
This short novel (~180 widely-spaced, large font pages), aimed at middle-graders, amused me greatly from reading the blurb. Reading the actual novel was a slightly different experience. Emma-Rose Paley is a middle-grader who weirdly dreams of red eyes watching her at night. I know authors don't have a darned thing to do with their book covers unless they self-publish (or maybe if it's a young children's story or a graphic novel where they illustrate it themselves), but I have to ask what this girl is dressing for on the cover of this book - not her age, that's for sure, and not to look Goth. Did the illustrator even know how old she was supposed to be? Who knows.
One thing which annoyed me was ER's description of her friend "Gabby" which is a tragic diminutive of the gorgeous full name of Gabrielle Marquez which she sports. Why it's Gabrielle and not Gabriela, I don't know. Gabby is, commendably, a vegetarian (we rarely see those in novels). The problem was that immediately my pleasant surprise arose, it was harshly slapped away. ER tells us that, just as Gabby puts up with ER's burger cravings, she puts up with Gabby's salads. What? The only thing a vegetarian can eat is a salad? I'm sorry but that's an insult and totally inappropriate. It's condescending and abusive, and I see this repeatedly in books which have a vegetarian character. If it's not salad, it's nut cutlets or something equally ridiculous. If the author were making this kind of 'fun' and hurling snide comments at a person because of their skin color or their sexual preference, would it be considered appropriate? Damn straight it wouldn't. So why do we get a bye when it comes to something like food preference?
It doesn't end there. "My BFF can be a bit annoying when she starts gushing about the wonders of bean sprouts" we read. Can we heap the clichés any higher? Yes, we can! "I can get you some tofu to practice on" Gabby says shortly afterwards. There's a difference between an author portraying a character as behaving in a certain way - even in being a bigot and a moron - and the author themselves shamelessly embracing attitudes which are at best ignorant, and at worst, downright insulting. I was not much of a fan of Ruth Ames after this, but I still had to try and read this novel, which wasn't turned out in the dark ages. It was published just five years ago. You would think people would be a little more accepting and enlightened.
When ER's great Aunt Margo visits, ER quickly determines, which unimpeachable evidence, that she's a vampire, and deduces from this that ER herself is also a vampire - or well on her way to becoming one. At least ER isn't dumb and clueless. That helped. Whether she was on the right track, or completely misinterpreting what was going on, remained to be discovered.
Whether she is or not, I'll leave for you to decide if you choose to read this, the first in a series. For me, the story improved after that early problem, and would have been rated a worthy read were it not for those insults. Kids are likely to enjoy it, but for me, I can't recommend it precisely because of the gratuitous condescension towards vegetarians. Yes, it does totally bite.
