Wednesday 27 October 2010

Undead and Unwed By MaryJanice Davidson


This is the first book the real-life "Supernatural Book Club" decided to read.
Summery (from the back cover)
"It's been a hell of a week for Betsy Taylor. First she loses her job. Then she's killed in a freak accident only to wake up in a morgue to discover she's a vampire. On the plus side, being undead sure beats the alternative. She now has superhuman strength and an unnatural effect on the opposite sex. But what Betsy can't handle is her new liquid diet...And whilst her mother and best-friend are just relieved to find out that being dead doesn't mean Betsy's can't visit, her new 'night-time' friends have the ridiculous idea that Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen. The scrumptious Sinclair and his cohorts want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious power-hungry vampire in five centuries. (A Bella Lugosi wannabe who's seen one to many B-movies.) Frankly Betsy couldn't care less about vamp politics. But Sinclair and his followers have a powerful weapon in their arsenal - unlimited access to Manolo Blahnik's Spring collection. Well, just because a girl's dead - er undead - doesn't mean she can't have great shoes... "

We had some slightly varying opinions, but for the most part we found the book to be silly, humorous, and utterly ridiculous. All of theses things the author intended. What she likely did not intent was the unrelatable, shallow, petty nature of the main character Betsy, as well as the plot holes and inconsistent storyline. The book club spend more than an hour going over the inconsistencies and trying to find answers, sadly their were none. Even the way "Betsy" becomes a vampire is unbelievable and difficult to comprehend, and don't even get me started on the "feeding" and the inconsistencies (and weirdly graphic scenes) regarding that... A couple of us were able to see the story on a more surface level and enjoy the book despite this fact.

Bottom line: It's meant to be ridiculous and fun. Unfortunately the inconsistencies in the plot and the vapid nature of the protagonist rained on the parade. Because of this we decided it wasn't worth reading the rest of the books in the series. There are many other "fun" reads out there, skip this one.