I finally read this book about six months after Ailly suggested I do so. I was not disappointed in Vivian Vande Velde’s story.
Kerry is a teenage girl. She has a father, a younger brother, a permit, and a mother who ran away to Florida with some guy. Kerry tends to dwell on her mother and blames herself, but we the readers never quite figure out what went down.
When Kerry’s brother leaves his teddy bear at the Laundromat, Kerry drives out in the middle of the night with no bra on to fetch it. There, she runs into some vampire-hunting crazies who have captured an unfortunate college student named Ethan. After helping to free Ethan, things get a little odd and a little disturbing with the appearance of Ethan’s seductive technical writing teacher. Yes, you read that right. Technical writing teacher.
And the next night things become yet odder. Kerry’s brother and father disappear, and she learns that yes, Ethan IS a vampire. Ethan and Kerry team up to find the vampire hunter who killed Ethan’s fellow vamp, Regina, and kidnapped Kerry’s family. It’s the beginning of a crazy romp through the night (and an abandoned subway station) and of a highly dysfunctional friendship.
I really liked this book, despite the fact (or maybe because of) I predicted all of the plot advances but one. And the one I didn’t forsee threw me far off course and sealed my verdict of “Good Book”. I laughed out loud at Kerry and Ethan’s visit to a sex shop, their “borrowing” of a car, and Ethan holding a vampire hunter in the backseat while trying to teach Kerry how to drive a stickshift. I also enjoyed the RHPS reference and the Greek jokes. Kerry seemed a little whiny and obsessive to me, but she had some of the greatest lines, especially her strange “every situation is different” speech in the last chapter that confused both her and the person she was talking to.
It’s an excellent book. Read it. And remember, kids: “If you don’t like vampire games, don’t play with vampires”.
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