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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gotta love Glory (No plot spoilers), March 10, 2007
This review is from: Real Vampires Have Curves (Glory St. Claire, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
When I first started read this book I wasn't sure I was going to like it. The main vamp (pun intended), Glory, seemed to be all over the place and a little too vapid for me.
However, she grows on you. Quickly. She becomes a bit more "real" as you go on and start finding out she's a vampire with a complex about her thighs and is semi-bothered by the fact she let a stripper talk her into a spray-on tan. She also has a smart alec guard dog named "Valdez" (Valdez the 112th, she thinks, because she names all her dogs "Valdez") who talks like John Travolta from "Get Shorty". See what I mean? She grows on you.
I ended up reading the entire book in one sitting and am glad I have the next book on order. More than once I caught myself giggling out loud at something. The cast of character is not the usual vampire fare and Bartlett has changed around the vampire powers and blood drinking rules to suit her setting which I like. There's no angst and doomed tone at all which is rare in a vampire novel, and frankly, it was much appreciated.
My only complaint was that the reasonably bright Glory missed some patently obvious incidents I felt she would have seen right through so occasionally it seemed like she went from bright to just utterly clueless which bugged me.
Overall, a very entertaining little book and I'm looking forward to the next one. I will recommend it to friends who like the vamp romance/mystery novel as something to give a look.
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44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievable, April 21, 2007
This review is from: Real Vampires Have Curves (Glory St. Claire, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
What did I miss? I read the great reviews of this book and if there was even one dissenting opinion, I wouldn't be writing this at all, but I feel like I got duped by the good reviews, so I'm writing one that's a little different.
I am probably spoiled. I'm a huge fan of the Betsy books by MaryJanice Davidson, and the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. They have very little in common, so my disappointment with "Real Vampires Have Curves" has nothing to do with it not fitting into the genre. My biggest problem is that it just wasn't believable. Even in fantasy, with fantastical characters, the characters and stories have to seem believable. There were too many holes in the spectacularly cliche and boring plot, including a few strange passages where whole bits of time pass for no reason. The characters don't develop at all and I really wanted Glory to develop because I found her to be shallow, insecure and dim.
In my opinion, if you are going to reference another work in your title, you are going to set some expectations. I expected Glory to be proud of her curves, or at least become proud of them. I did not expect her to claim she was just "bloated" on the day of her turning or to constantly be down on or suspicious of anyone who is attracted to her because they are attracted to her. Bloated and curvy are not the same thing.
The mind-reading was severely overdone and the talking dog was so hokey, it all added up to me not ever being able to see these characters as real life entities. The whole time I was reading it, they appeared in my mind as cartoon characters, unrealistic (within the genre), disjointed and flat.
I wanted to like this book so much and I'm really bewildered about the whole experience. Apparently people like the book. (Heck, hon, you even got another one coming, which is great. I'm happy for you!) This book just wasn't for me--which wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't feel like I was completely misled by the reviews and the blurbs about the book.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Potential in Danger, February 17, 2008
This review is from: Real Vampires Have Curves (Glory St. Claire, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
Real Vampires is an entertaining story that has some fresh and imaginative thoughts to add to the Vampire genre. Unfortunately it has some of the trite stumbling blocks that seem to plague the books of even some of our favorite authors of late.
While the characters can be fresh and witty the heroine sleeps with just about anything, has a few unreal stumbling blocks ( she never once in 400 years has considered learning a single vamp power when she was surrounded by a powerful family full of vampires? But now suddenly they have appeal?), and the ending of both the main plot in the book as well as the smaller side plot are both glaringly evident well before you get to them.
Similar to Savannah Russe or Kimberly Raye our heroine is a clothes fiend, but in her case she's collected so many clothes and other items over the years that she decides to go into business selling her 'vintage' pieces. She has a psychic/bionic dog for protection and a handsome and powerful near husband who turned her. She continues to both draw him close when its convenient and push him away when its not in an immature fashion similar to her love and hate relationship with drinking blood.
To sum up: Some will get staked, Some will act heroic, and they'll be a good deal of dirty lust in between. It's an entertaining read to pick up, it just won't revolutionize your way of looking at the genre or otherwise rock your world.
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