Thursday, April 18, 2013

Undead and Wed.

 Title/Author: Undead and Unwed by Mary Janice Davidson.

Genre:  Paranormal Romance.

Publisher: Berkley Trade.

Source: Purchased.

Favorite character:

Favorite Quote:

Synopsis: It's been a hell of a week for Betsy Taylor. First, she loses her job. Then, she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites (besides waking up in the morgue dressed in a pink suit and cheap shoes courtesy of her stepmother) is that she can't seem to stay dead. Every night she rises, with a horrible craving for blood. And she's not taking too well to a liquid diet. Worst of all, Betsy's new friends have some silly idea that she's the prophesied vampire queen.

My Thoughts:  This book is *very* funny.  Very.  Main character Betsy does not take her new status as a vampire too seriously.  In fact, you can say she doesn't take it seriously at all.  She makes fun of all the vampire tropes and myths and is even immune to a few things that hurt other vampires.  In the midst of all this, the two vampire gangs are trying to get her on their side or kill her, because her appearance has been foretold for centuries. 

Betsy is a likeable character and her humor and sassiness shine through at every turn.  She shows vulnerability in regards to her father, stepmother and mother which I enjoyed too.  I loved her shoe obsession and how she could practically be bribed by Jimmy Choos and Milano Blahniks.  She is also very sympathetic to others around her.  She helps people and vampires alike when the most rational thing would be to walk away or kill them. 

Her love interest and mentor Eric Sinclair is a typical suave, handsome, hot vampire who tries to help Besty while helping the vampire population at the same time.  He and Betsy annoy each other and she resists his help and his advances, creating tension between them. And Bety's nickname for him is hysterical. I didn't love him but I didn't dislike him either.  I would like to see him more developed in future adventures.  Then we have the bad vampire who wants Betsy on his side.  He is funny and pathetic in the way that Betsy views him...a walking cliche.  However, the atrocities he has commited over the centures show how crazy and dangerous he is.  Betsy's friends are fun as well, especially her best friend who is so thrilled that she has her friend back, she doesn't care that she is a vampire, which is just awesome. 

Even though I think this would be catergorized as Paranormal Romance, there is not a lot of romance found in this book, which is fine for me.  However, there are a few extremely intimate scenes that will satisfy (so to speak) people who like their erotica.

This might not be a problem for some readers, but because the humor did not let up, about 2/3 of the way into it I found myself struggling.  I think it took too much energy for me personally to stay in that mindset.  Yes, there are moments of seriousness but they are few compared to the humor.  Maybe if there were more it would feel more balanced.  Also...I hesitate to bring this up, but ultimately I decided to because I like to think of this blog as a discussion platform of a book, not just a review site.  I don't think the author meant to use this word as anything but trying to get her point across and I don't hold it against her, but she uses the word retarded twice.  I would bet a million dollars she didn't mean anything disrespectful by it, but it just made me uncomfortable. 

The humor and plot of this story -- thinking outside of the box and taking vampire myths and cliche's and turning them on their ear outweight any minor personal setbacks for me.  This book is a lot of fun and I wonder how Betsy will deal with upcoming vampiric issues.

All in all: Very original and laugh out loud funny.

Other Editions:



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4 comments:

Kate @Midnight Book Girl said...

Ugh, on that word. I use to use it a lot, but finally realized that even though I didn't mean it a certain way, it still wasn't appropriate. Now I'm so aware of it that it would probably make me cringe too. I'm not into being pc, but I am into being aware of my words... I still screw up though!

This is a series I have considered, but for humor I really like Molly Harper and Janet Evanovich, so I haven't really stepped outside of those authors much.

fakesteph said...

This sounds super fun. I'm not really into erotic fiction (paranormal or otherwise), but I might actually check this out. And I hate that word!

Karen said...

I wouldn't suspect you of liking a book like this Pam. It sounds like a lot of fun and right up my alley so I think I'll check it out.

Midnyte Reader said...

@Kate: I haven't read Harper or Evanovich. I'll have to look them up one of these days.

@Steph: It was very fun, the eroticism was short so it wasn't really an issue for me.

@Karen: I wanted to read this in anticipation of AAD.

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