Customer Reviews

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

5 star:		(116)
4 star:		(70)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Beth Fantaskey's "Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side" is a tongue-in-cheek teenage vampire romance that will have you cheering for its heroine. Jessica Packwood is an adopted Romanian orphan with loving, hippie parents. Raised on a strict vegan diet, she's a math geek, and at seventeen, she's never been kissed. She's not afraid of getting dirty; she helps muck stables and does household chores on the farm as the only child. Her invisible social life goes on predictably until the first day of her senior year, when a creepy guy in a velvet coat suddenly turns up as the new Romanian exchange student living on her farm.

Lucius Vladescu is tall, dark, handsome, multilingual and irritating: he's on several medal-winning sports teams and picks up new skills with ease. He claims that Jessica is really a vampire princess, the last of her line, and that he's a vampire prince and her betrothed. Jessica is very grounded in math and proven fact, and can't tolerate his claims of being a supernatural creature (perhaps Jess's literal thinking is also a rebellion against her New Age hippie parents and their vegan lifestyle). He gives her the "Teen Vampire's Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions" to aid her in her transition (according to Fantaskey's mythology, a female vampire reaches maturity at eighteen, and cannot complete her transformation without being bitten by a male vampire), buys her beautiful prom dresses, and encourages her to embrace her intelligence, beauty and royal status.

Jessica and Lucius's clans are teetering on the brink of a full-scale vampire war if the two fail to marry as set forth in their contract, but Jessica insists on pursuing all-too-human Jake, who's none too bright but "nice." But as time goes by, Jessica finds herself slowly reaching out to Lucius and finds cracks in her carefully tended façade of scientific fact. Her world shifts from black and white to grey, and as it does, she loses her famed ability to compete in math competitions. Lucius ramps up his campaign to woo Jess, but after a series of fateful events, a horrific chain of revenge is unleashed and Jess's newfound love is in danger of being crushed.

Jess is a multifaceted character full of her own talents and a fierce independent streak buried under teen insecurity. She does not pine endlessly over Lucius; rather, her affection for him is gradual and increasingly hard-won. Lucius is irritating and all-too-human: intelligent, cunning, and always dangerous, we see a frightening transformation as his vampire uncles come to the US to chastise him for breaching the treaty. He struggles constantly against his own desires and the effects of years of physical and psychological abuse (there are graphic scenes of violence and a good deal of swearing) as he slides into a terrifying spiral of detached violence.

The narration is divided between Jess's observations and first-person letters penned by Lucius to his uncle (often containing amusing recollections of encounters with the feisty Jess). This narrative trick wasn't always a smooth transition, but it allows readers to get a better grasp on the otherwise mysterious Lucius's upbringing and vampire traditions. The writing is briskly paced and lushly evocative (lots of high level vocabulary, particularly from Lucius). The vampire universe is lushly drawn and utterly engrossing; much like Twilight's vampires, Lucius can go out in sunlight, survive grave injury, and possesses great strength, but he can't transform. The relationships between Jess and her best friend Mindy, Jess and her adopted parents, and Jess and her evil rival Faith Crosse bring back all the awkwardness and insecurities of high school and first love in a believable portrait of a girl discovering her larger-than-life heritage and her fight to hold onto the vampire she loves. A haunting love story set against a backdrop of a combination of high school and of ominous Romanian woods populated by craggy fortresses and howling wolves, this will be sure to appeal to fans of Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) and other teen vampire fiction.

Originality: 5
Characters: 4
Writing: 5
Setting: 4
Plot: 5
Passion: 4
Overall: 27/30 90% = A
Cover Bonus: 0

First off, I need to address why I ended up reading this book. I was NOT going to read this. I'll address some of these reasons *cough* cover *cough*, *cough* title *cough* later. Until I read Beth Fantaskey's guest blog on Wondrous Reads. This guest post [..] in and I purchased my copy that very afternoon. And please note that if I can help it I do not buy books that I can't purchase in Kindle format. I will wait until it's out on the Kindle before buying the physical book. Not with this book. I HAD to have it. Now, on with my review.

Originality:
I awarded this element of the book a 5 not because it was "truly" 100% original but it's execution was original. I have never read a book where a young male swoops in and insists on wooing a young female into being his beloved for fear that if he fails his family and her family will throw themselves into all out war.

Characters:
Jessica (woot! my name!) is someone that I immediately related to. It's strange though because we are incredibly unalike but that doesn't matter because ultimately she was just an average, teenager blossoming into a young adult and all that entails with that change. She was real. She was also very mature, unwilling to rush into anything with out thinking it through. Her parents were a wacky pair but they too where amazing parents.

Lucius. Now Lucius is a guy that I could fall head over heels for. He's 110% chivarly. His accent (yes!) had me lured in from the get go. He was way too funny at points that I was wiping tears from my eyes. But I did hate him in this book too. He gives up and I can't stand a weak male lead character just as much as I can't stand a weak female lead character, but I have to give him credit because Jessica does not make it easy for him, not in the least. He does evolve and seeing him do that is very fulfilling.

The other characters play some huge roles too. (I read this a while ago so I can't think of their names!)

Writing:
Now this is what [...] in! Beth's writing is phenomenal. I only read that guest blog and couldn't get enough. It seems to come naturally to her or something. Everything flows so well. Nothing is pressured, nothing is presumed to happen. I hate it when I "know" what's going to happen and I never felt that with this book. The ending was just craziness but it all worked out and I really hope to be able to continue learning about Jessica's world.

Setting:
The setting was just the coolest to me! It's set in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. This is just north of where I live so it felt very familiar to me. Some of the story took place in Romania, I believe, which is where Lucius comes from. There's some amazing castle scenes that I just loved! I would have loved more of that in this book.

Plot:
The plot was awesome. I hate giving away any major details concerning books so I'm just going to paste a bit of the first chapter here instead of me rambling off every detail that I can think of.

Excerpt: (briefly, read the rest here)

Chapter 1

The first time I saw him, a heavy, gray fog clung to the cornfields, tails of mist slithering between the dying stalks. It was a dreary early morning right after Labor Day, and I was waiting for the school bus, just minding my own business, standing at the end of the dirt lane that connected my family's farmhouse to the main road into town.

I was thinking about how many times I'd probably waited for that bus over the course of a dozen years, killing time like any mathlete would, by doing the calculations in my head, when I noticed him.

And suddenly that familiar stretch of blacktop seemed awfully desolate.
He was standing under a massive beech tree across the road from me, his arms crossed over his chest. The tree's low, gnarled branches twisted down around him, nearly concealing him in limbs and leaves and shadows. But it was obvious that he was tall and wearing a long, dark coat, almost like a cloak.



Passion:
The passion in this book gets to a boiling point a few times. The pot never spills over but that's okay. The true meaning of love is what matters in this book. They are teenagers with hormones but it never steals the scene completely. It was kind of sad at times for Jessica and Lucius because they both end up fighting their hearts.

Cover & Title:
You probably noticed that I did NOT give any bonus points for the cover. That's because I HATE it. I mean it's not the ugliest thing but what hurts me to look at it is the title and the cover together. It just doesn't make sense. Even after you read it you're still not going to like the title. The cover kinda makes sense but not the title. There is a "guide" book in the story but it's not what I would have picked, at all. I can't really make a suggestion as to what I would have named it but almost anything would be better than what it is. Or at least a cover that reflected a guide book in some fashion.

Overall:
I LOVED this book. I had the hardest time putting it down in any fashion. It made me laugh and I might have teared up a bit at a point, but ultimately it made me smile. It was a true love story with teenaged angst and super natural twists. I didn't mention the vampire element in any of the above because it's really not what swayed me to loving the book. Lucius could have been just any normal exchange student and the story would still make sense, minus the impending uproar between the two vampire clans of course. :)

My opinion of Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side changed about a dozen times as I read the book. At first, I didn't like it much - because I took an immediate dislike to Lucius, the vampire prince whose arrogant, totally unsympathetic attitude was anything but seductive. It took me a long time to warm up to him at all. He's a guy who wears a mask pretty much 24/7, so the only way we get to see his true self is through the letters he writes to his uncle Vasile. The letters are funny, charming, smart, and because he's writing to an equal/superior, his ego is less dominant. So I started to like Lucius because of his letters, especially because it's mostly through the letters that we see him grow and change.

Once I realized that Lucius was going to evolve, and improve, as a romantic lead, I got really into the book. Really, the story only makes sense because Lucius is such a jerk at the beginning - otherwise, why would Jessica want to turn down a handsome, wealthy vampire prince offering marriage and a glittering, glamorous future?

And then the book takes a pretty dramatic turn. I want to avoid spoilers, so that's all I can say. Like I said, it took me (and Jessica) a long time to warm up to Lucius. Around the halfway point, we'd both been convinced. Jessica was ready to believe he's a real vampire and consider his offer of marriage; and I was ready to root for him. And just as that happens, the whole game changes. To make a long story short, Lucius starts acting like a jerk again. An even bigger jerk than before. Because we still get to read his letters, we know what he's up to, but frankly, I didn't care. I'd just BARELY started to like the guy, and I don't think his good intentions were enough to justify some of the nasty things he did.

Basically, what it comes down to is for the first, say, 30% of the book Lucius is a jerk; and then for the next 30% we get to really like him, and then for the final 30% of the book he is - at a minimum - ACTING like a jerk again. Well, that means that for 60% - two-thirds! - of the book, the romantic lead is a jerk, unworthy of his protagonist.

Jessica is pretty charming throughout; she's just a sensible, likable high-school girl. Like in a lot of teen vampire romances (ahem, Twilight, ahem), she has a choice between two hunky guys: dark, dangerous Lucius and sweet, uncomplicated Jake. Frankly, I didn't think either was the right guy for her. Lucius tries to convince Jessica that it's a choice between a boy and a man, or between a sweet romance and a passionate one. I think the right guy for Jessica would be more of an equal (it takes Lucius a long time to believe Jessica is his equal, and I don't think that he ever really acts like it) and he'd know that there's room for some sweetness in a passionate romance. The right guy would be somewhere in between Jake and Lucius - and unfortunately, he's not in the book.

When you read the title of this novel, you kind of assume it is going to be a light hearted paranormal with some humor. It was not what I expected. Jessica has just started her senior year in PA when she meets Lucius, a new student from Romania. He claims that Jessica is actually a Romanian vampire princess who has been betrothed to him since birth. He tries to woo her, but Jessica doesn't believe that he is really a vampire or that they have to get married. When she finally changes her mind, Lucius has set his sights on someone else. Jessica must figure out a way to win Lucius back and take her place as vampire royalty.

Like I said, after reading the title and the synopsis, I thought it was going to have a lot of cute lessons from the dating guide and be fairly light hearted. It was not. The vampire dating book was hardly mentioned, and there was a lot of dark things going on towards the end. I also did not like that the enire book one or the other was turning the other one down. They both were so stubburn that it frustrated me. On a positive note, I liked that the heroine was a size 10 and not some stick creature. Of course it had a happy ending, but I did not like how they got to it. This book had so much potential. If it had more moments with the dating guide and been less serious, I think I would have enjoyed it more. With the synopsis and title, my brain was just expecting something other than what I got. It was a pretty good read but not one worth rereading.

Jessica is set to finish her Senior Year in her Rural Pennsylvania town with a bang. She's never been popular, but seeks out what she's good at (Math and Horseback riding) and determined to enjoy it. She's had her eye on that sexy Rancher's son, Jake, a few farms over and would love to finally get her first kiss. Then, Lucius Vladescu shows up from Romania declaring that Jessica is in fact the Vampire Princess Antanasia Dragomir his betrothed. The Vladescu and Dragomir Clans have wared for centuries. A tenuis peace has held for the past 20 years because of a promise of an alliance between the two warring clans by the marriage of Antanasia (Jessica) and Lucius after Antanasia's 18th birthday. Jessica wants none of this and is furious that her adoptive parents let Lucius stay in their guest house above the garage and that Lucius is determined to watch her every move and sneer down on her through his arrogance and conceit. All she wants it to compete in the 4H races and win her next Mathlete competition. Now she has some freak who thinks he's a vampire telling her that she dresses poorly and is weak. How did her Senior Year get so complicated?

This book held so much promise. The premise is what captured my attention--it sounded like a little Romeo and Juliet, with Twilight (The Twilight Saga), and The Princess Diaries (Widescreen Edition) all magically mixed together for a fun, new story. The's writing is rather simple, more so than I expected and have personally read for a YA novel. I forced myself to overlook the writing style to immerse myself in the story and was pretty captivated for the first 1/3 of the book before it became increasingly frustrating to read.

So, the frustrating parts.....
1. Jessica (Antanasia) is so bullheaded. She's always hated the story of her birth parents--she views them as ignorant freaks who got sucked into some cult and had to abandon her to the care of others. She refuses to believe anything other than the absolute. She clings to Math and Science because it is real. Anything that can't be proved with Math or Science is bad/wrong/make-believe. She absolutely refuses to believe that Lucius is a vampire. She's shamed to think her birth parents believed themselves vampires and drank blood like the crazy and insane.
2. Lucius was so frustrating! He started off great--His High and Mighty Vampire Prince who looks down on the world around him. He is duty bound to bring back the Dragomir Princess back with him. He honestly can't see why she wouldn't jump at the chance to be with him. The only glimpse we get into what he is thinking is through letters he writes home to his Uncle--they are really hilarious. I loved watching his character develop in the beginning of his stay in the States. He really starts to see outside of himself. He was fascinating to watch. He feels jilted when Jessica starts dating Jake right in front of him, he goes out and gets himself a girlfriend. Then, once he sees that he's fallen for Jessica (despite them dating other people) he pulls away completely and is HORRIBLE, boorish, and borderline mentally abusive towards Jessica. He barely gets a page (ONE SINGLE PAGE) at the VERY end to drop all that crap and be his true self, but we got what felt like hundreds of pages of him being a real jerk. We never got a chance to see him do anything other than drop the mask.
3. So 1/3 of the way through the book Lucius realizes that in order to protect Jessica, he must call off the pact and pull away from her. Somehow his HORRIBLE behavior towards Jessica causes her to say to herself "Gee, I think I love this guy." She keeps throwing herself at him and he keeps telling her to go away and tries to hurt her emotionally or scare her physically so she'll leave him be. What a dream guy! *snickers* It wasn't just a few times she does this, but over and over and over again. It became annoying. CHANGE TACTICS ALREADY, JESSICA! Really, I get it, they are teenagers and he's trying to be all Princely and save her from herself, but he gets increasingly hurtful and downright mean by abandoning her and other things. I just didn't like him so much after this. And at the end, I still didn't like him (and I usually love the bad boy types in these books.)
4. Jessica becomes nothing. She starts out a strong Mathlete who tutors her best friend. She loves to ride her horse and trains for a jumping competition. All the sudden, she can't get Lucius out of her head and she no longer loves Math and drops out of her Math club. Also, her horse is just forgotten. She tries to become a Princess and in the process has lost any hobby, interest, achievement that is hers. Her new achievement is wearing her mom's old dress and styling her hair. Wow--talk about amazing? Right?
5. Jessica has no real connection to others--every conversation she has with other girls revolves around Lucius and boys in general. Hey, I was a "boy-crazy" teen once, but even I talked about something OTHER than boys with my friends.

I really wanted to like this book. But this is the first book I've read where I really wanted to reach inside and shake the characters and slap some sense into them. I did find that by reading the story of their wedding on the author's website ([...]) helped ease some of my frustrations over the original story. Even so, I still have no desire to relive the angst, frustration, meaness, and annoyance of the published story.

I give this book 2 stars for great premise and a horrible, frustrating, annoying delivery.

***SPOILERS***

This is a story about a 17-year-old pretty but geeky girl from a rural area in Pennsylvania who finds out she is a vampire princess when the vampire prince she's been promised to since she was a baby shows up to claim her.

What I liked: For the most part I liked the hero's personality. He was rather unique and interesting. I liked him wooing the heroine, and I liked his very funny letters to his mean uncle.

What I did not like:

The vampires have almost zero power. All we see Lucius do is endlessly hit baskets and jump high in basketball, act intimidating and push out his fangs, and heal over a few days, rather than instantly, from a horse jumping on him. Like the vampires who drink "True Blood" and Edward in Twilight, Lucius is a "vegetarian" vampire in that the only blood he drinks is from a medical bag and only when he is wounded.

I kept wondering: How is it that both he and Jessica are a prince and princess, but somehow all four of their parents, presumably two sets of kings and queens, could be staked by a "purge of vampires" in Romania? Who did all this purging? Why did both sets of rulers die and not every one of the members of their supposed armies before anyone could get to the rulers? It almost never happens that a king goes to battle in front of his army, and even if he did, why would he bring his wife, or vice versa? Who was powerful enough to stake them? No mention of this is made that I noticed.

When Jessica goes to Lucius's castle in Romania, we find that her family's castle is very close--how can two supposed "kingdoms" exist in one small country? How can there be 5 million vampires and apparently all of them are either of one or the other two families? Are there no other vampires in the whole world? Why?

Why would these two families be at war? What power is it that they are supposed to gain in such a small place--like two warring villages, it seems like. Where were all these 5 million vampires anyway? We never see them or notice them in the book.

Lucius talks, in Pennsylvania, like a noble from the 17th century in Europe--for example, he claims that anyone who insults a princess should be killed at once. Yet in his own country somehow the peasants managed to kill his parents? How can peasants be under the thumb of the vampires on the one hand, yet powerful enough to slaughter their king and queen?

All through the book a big deal is made of how under the thumb Lucius is of his uncle and how the only bar to him being with the heroine is that his mean uncle wants to kill her and take over her kingdom. Yet soon after he gets in Romania, Lucius (off-stage) simply slaughters his uncle without barely raising a sweat. And then suddenly the romantic conflict switches to him thinking, oh, that means I'm evil so I'm no good for Jessica. What?

A big deal is made in Jessica's guide for coming of age as a vampire that vampires can't fall in love, yet both she and Lucius fall madly in love--and no reason is given for why that is possible for them.

The vampire world in Romania is really limited, but Lucius's family's castle itself is made to seem like a maze that no enemy could get inside so, again, how the heck did the king and queen get murdered? It makes no sense. (I know, I keep coming back to this theme--but even though that is in the background of the story, it is the setup for the whole thing, and don't you think it should make sense? Well, I sure do.)

This book is kind of a second-class romance novel--if it were written for adult women, the flaws in its execution would never have been forgiven by romance readers (I'm a romance reader myself, and as you see, I'm having trouble with it).

I'll tell you one thing I do like about the romance, though. Even though Jessica dates a regular guy from the wrestling team, Jake, her farmer neighbor, for a while, there is never any doubt that she will end up with Lucius. There is no "team Jake" at all because he's just mortal and this is two vampires. I really prefer that to all those romantic triangles with all the young adult writers copying Twilight.

The threat of mean high school students supposedly wreaking vengeance on Lucius and Jessica was weak to me--and the fact that Jessica and Lucius were ever for five seconds afraid of those lame high school students as a threat to the two of them simply made the whole vampire thing all the more dumb and weak to me.

Most YA that have coming of magical age stories do a poor job of justifying why the teen comes of age at 16 or, in this case, 17. This is a little better, but not much. In the vampire mythology of this world, vampires are born, are immortal--unless staked. However, the fact that Lucius and Jessica have middle-aged or old-appearing uncles makes it seem as if vampires age over time, which makes no sense if they have healing ability and are immortal.

Female vampires don't become true vampires, with their fangs descending (what a strange term, kind of icky) until they are bitten on the neck by their mate. Not only is that kind of sexist, but it was weird to me that this bite means an eternal commitment. Really? The upshot of that would be that if Lucius were to bite any human female on the neck, she would become a vampire and be his mate forever--which it is mentioned the cheerleader he is making out with regularly would become if he bit her. If that's so, wouldn't that mean that any male vampire who bites any female at all then is saddled with her for life as his vampire mate and he'd end up with a harem? (What if he bit a male? What then? A bisexual harem?) This being the setup, I didn't get it when Lucius told Jessica that if there was a war between his clan and hers that humans woud die because armies get hungry? So they do suck humans? But how with the whole biting-equals-mating thing?

In short, the mythology is confusing and makes little sense to me.

The author's writing in general is pretty good, though. I think the book tied up enough that a sequel isn't really necessary.

Jessica is a teenager living a normal life in a rural setting. When a handsome and dramatic young man, Lucius, from Romania starts attending her high-school, she learns some amazing secrets about her past and origins--she is a vampire princess with an arranged marriage to the new kid at school. He is a vampire prince. However, her new prince is arrogant and possessive. She rebels against his assumptions that she belongs to him and struggles to maintain her normal life participating mathlete competitions and dating her super-nice, normal boyfriend.

Senior year is a time of change in any teenager's life, but especially for Jessica. She is starting to feel like a grown woman and her heritage has surprising consequences. As she gets to know Lucius she starts to have feelings for him, and to develop some vampire tendencies. When her prince leaves town due to her continued rejection of him she has a big choice to make--does she stay in her comfort zone or go to her Romanian castle and rule her subjects?

This is a fun book and the tale reads quickly. The characters are interesting and fairly well-drawn. The plot takes some quick turns that seem to skip over a lot of important moments. I think this should have been two books that allowed space to describe more about Jessica's development as a vampire, her feelings for her various boyfriends and vampire politics in Jessica's world. There wasn't a really clear sense of this vampire world, thought the human one was drawn clearly. One annoying detail of the story was that when Jessica developed feelings for a boy she could no longer do math--a dated and unnecessary stereotype.

For the first 130 pages, the heroine spends all her energy denying that vampires exist and rejecting everything about Lucius; and the hero spends all his energy whing about how his betrothed vampire pricess is rejecting him and is completely unfit and unaware of her heritage.

Then, abruptly, Lucius seems to switch tactics. Instead of courting Jessica, he'll make her jealous by giving all his attention to the blond cheerleader. She hurt him, he'll hurt her back. And the tactic works, and Jessica suddenly is interested but Lucius has gone over to the dark side. After faking his death and returning to Romania, Lucius is seeking to take power over the vampire clans. A convenient vampire uncle of Jessica's shows up to whisk her off to Romania to challenge Lucius, and hopefully marry him to fulfill the pact that will stop the vampire war. And suddenly the book is over.

Not very smoothly written, not very romantic, not very logical or believable. The setup took too long and the ending was too abrupt. But if you're looking for a fast-read fantasy about being a long lost vampire princess who suddenly decides to win over the brooding violent prince who uses quotation marks farrrr too often, then this is the book for you.

_Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side_ is a fun piece of brain candy for teen girls; I enjoyed it, but I think I'd have liked it better when I was in the target audience. Imagine the "girl finds out she's a long-lost princess" fantasy combined with the "girl finds out she's the destined true love of a hot vampire guy" fantasy, and you've pretty much got the gist.

Fans of the Twilight series are bound to love this, and I have to say, I actually liked Fantaskey's book better. Part of it was that I liked Jessica's initial resistance to Lucius. She has an independent streak that was gratifying to this reader. I also loved Beth Fantaskey's sense of humor. Lucius's letters, in particular, are hilarious.

I was surprised by the extent to which the climax and ending, reminiscent of a Beauty and the Beast tale, moved me.

What didn't work for me: Jessica's and Lucius' secondary romances. Jessica's subplot with her human boyfriend wasn't developed enough; the guy was so absent from the story that I wasn't quite sure why everyone considered them to be an item. By contrast, Lucius' other relationship was so prominent that it seemed to eclipse what was going on between Lucius and Jessica. I think it's intentional, so that Jessica comes to believe she's lost Lucius for good, and maybe it works just fine, as evidenced by the fact that I got mad at Lucius right along with Jessica.

I also have qualms about the way female vampires develop their fangs in Fantaskey's universe. A female vampire has to be bitten by a male vampire before the fangs will emerge. It makes me a little uneasy. The "meaning" of fang development is a little vague; it seems like the girl is not through with vampire "puberty" until the teeth have come in, but linking that to a bite from the male (and vampire bites are depicted as very sexual) makes it seem more like a loss of virginity. This confusion of metaphors results in the reader getting the sense that a female vampire can't "grow up" without giving in to a male.

I WOULD give it three due to it having such promise in the writing-style, but the content itself made it a two.
First of all, before you are deceived, this title does not match the theme of this book. It began light-hearted, comical even, but then it just became dark, angsty. I literally watched the tone change right before my eyes, like a grayscale. This would usually please me, a change of tone, if done right. But here it was just in bad taste, false advertisement. I might have been better prepared if I had known it would get as dark as it was.

This book made me angry. Not just because of the events, but the fact that it could have been GREAT, but the author wasted her talent and pretty much threw the book down the toilet, kind of like she lost commitment. I'm not sure if that is true, but judging by the content, it is how I felt. Now I will explain why it has its ups and down.

1. Conflicting Women Empowerment Message

Jessica begins as a struggling woman, growing through the first half of the book to embrace her beautiful, naturally curvy body. But then SPOILER ALERT: She spends the rest of the book chasing after a boy that does not even want her or is a broadway-actor in pretending not to, a boy that slights her again and again and again until the very last pages of the book. So the message becomes mixed, hypocritical really, because first she is "oh, I am beautiful and independent. I don't need any man." and then she changes her mind and is like "I love him so much, I will risk body, soul, and embarrassment to keep him in my arms!" ALSO, she gives up her hobbies and interests to instead focus all her attention on this boy. Yep, awesome..

2. Bad Use of Humour

The letters to the Uncle. *sigh* they were cheesy, very cheesy, the play on outsider emerging into American culture was bad enough. (think "i am having a, how do you Americans say, 'a ball.'") But the fact that these letter were being sent to a highly rigid, strict uncle that beats Lucius makes it seem unreasonable that he would ever even write such letters to this man, in such a light-hearted manner.

3. Inconsistent (and bad) Focus

First we are dealing with Jessica and getting a logical, smart girl like herself to believe in the supernatural and embrace her true nature as a beautiful vampire princess. Instead, the focus shifts onto Lucius, angst-ridden teenage boy that neglects Jessica for a girl at the high school, slights Jessica, treats Jessica like complete garbage, and yet- all of this behaviour is excused because he's "going through a rough time and had a tough life". So if a man has an abusive past, this means that he should be allowed to treat a woman in a way that leaves her broken, confused, lonely and neglected? Great message.

4. She's such a great writer- she dumped her potential down the drain!

The book was interesting, it flowed, it seemed to be controlled and progress well- then it took a turn. It was as if the author had followed no guide for the story and just decided to take it on a whole new road. The first half of the book could have been an entire different book just from how lighter it tended to be in tone. Even in Twilight (oh, yes, I'm going there) at least the tone remained the same- mysterious, eerie, leaving you with anticipation when something magical will happen. In this book the tone was superfluous at the beginning. The parents just say oh, Lucius is a vampire, honey. No lead-ins, it's just landed on us and we don't even get the time to wonder, to infer, such as in Twilight...we knew he was, but the fun was waiting for Bella to see for herself, for the truth to be exposed. Of course, Jessica didn't believe at first, but no one even tried to prove it to her. They just stated it like it was natural.

Speaking of natural, the book seems to have some message about horses, being "Green" and eating vegan. Cool. but then it is dropped. Not cool.

5. Gaping Plot Holes

Characters that were important in the beginning and end fall off the focus wheel. Mindy, Jessica's so-called best friend, is left out of all knowledge of what's going on, even though Jessica herself tells us how trustworthy Mindy is. So instead Mindy is left hurt and confused and eventually resents Jessica. Jessica's adoptive parents play a role consistently during the story, but in the end she goes to Trans. and we don't even hear a word about them anymore. Jessica doesnt even think of the people that raised her for 18 years anymore. No goodbye forever, Jessica! No we don't know if this is a good idea...no anything. She just forgets all about them and is only thinking about Lucius.

6. Another Loss for Women Empowerment that could have redeemed the book

Lucius treats Jessica like crap, as we know, even when she is taking over as princess. He threatens her, belittles, and taunts her family. But instead Jessica excuses it. "I won't talk to you when you're acting like this!" no, idiot, don't talk to him at all and see him as an enemy. She is so intent on being WITH him that it becomes her first goal. EVEN when it is made clear that there is no trouble struggle- because Lucius's family is more powerful and rich.

BTW, was there just no leader this whole time in Jessica's pack? Who was leading them until she came along to lead for a day or two?

This story could have been saved if Jessica actually woke up and acted strong. Decided to die with honour, to fight but never bow to someone that belittled her people. They might have been a weaker vampire people, yes, but instead of fortifying an army, her disorganized family merely talked about it and loosely formed fortifications, but nothing significant. Had she been a real leader, she could have empowered her family to at least prepare to be taken over- fight until they were eventually beaten into submission. Warrior's spirit. But nope, it does not happen here.

7. One last point- the concept of vampires are butchered here.

Atleast Twilight (yep, going there AGAIN!) gives vampires qualities besides superstrength. it is not the case here. these vampires sleep, eat normal food along with blood, transform into nothing, can go out in daylight...its just pretty much super strong people that use the title of vampire and also prefer blood and have fangs. If you want a real mythical story, this one will not do the job for you. In soo many ways. Stoker would cringe.

So overall, this book will leave you more frustrated and angry than anything. I would not suggest reading it, unless inconsistent, angsty books is in your favour.