The Reformed Vampire Support Group [Hardcover]

Catherine Jinks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2009

Think vampires are romantic, sexy, and powerful? Think again. Vampires are dead. And unless they want to end up staked, they have to give up fanging people, admit their addiction, join a support group, and reform themselves.
Nina Harrison, fanged at fifteen and still living with her mother, hates the Reformed Vampire Support Group meetings every Tuesday night. Even if she does appreciate Dave, who was in a punk band when he was alive, nothing exciting ever happens. That is, until one of group members is mysteriously destroyed by a silver bullet. With Nina (determined to prove that vamps aren't useless or weak) and Dave (secretly in love with Nina) at the helm, the misfit vampires soon band together to track down the hunter, save a werewolf, and keep the world safe from the likes of themselves.
The perfect anecdote to slick vampire novels, this murder-mystery comedy of errors will thrill fans of Evil Genius.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up—Nina Harrison has been 15 years old since 1973. That's because she is a vampire. She and the members of the Reformed Vampire Support Group break the mold when compared to the accepted vampire lore that has been around since the time of Count Dracula. They are not beautiful, strong, powerful, rich, or in control. Instead they are sickly, struggling just to stay alive, living on the blood of the guinea pigs they keep, and making the best of their affliction. They have vowed not to drink human blood or be responsible for the creation of another vampire. Nina hates her boring, uneventful life, which changes drastically when Casimir is staked and the group, realizing that the killer knows who and where they are, all move in with Nina and her mother, a nonvampire. With only a silver bullet as a clue to track the vampire slayer, Nina, Dave, and Father Ramon, who sponsors the group, set out on a dangerous journey. Along the way they rescue a werewolf from an illegal fight ring, deal with a villainous father/son team, and discover that their immortal lives might have more to offer than they ever thought. Support Group is truly like no other vampire story. It is witty, cunning, and humorous, with numerous plot twists and turns. Jinks has conjured up an eccentric but believable cast of characters in a story full of action and adventure.—Donna Rosenblum, Floral Park Memorial High School, NY
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From Booklist

It’s hard to get too involved in a cast of barely likable whiners and pathetic hand-wringers, but somehow that isn’t much of a problem in Jinks’ droll vampire send-up. These bloodsuckers are anything but sexy and mysterious, as here vampirism is a cross between a defining addiction and communicable disease; those infected spend most of their time being seriously ill and attending AA-style meetings with fellow sufferers. Nina, permanently arrested at 15 years old, can’t stand her fellow group members, but when one of them is found staked they all must work together to uncover the slayer before he can kill again. While readers might feel pushed rather than led through the plot, Jinks offers some wry vampire-centric twists on mystery conventions (having to repeatedly piece together what happened while literally dead to the world from sunup to sundown); and when the humor hits its mark, this can be laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the comedy, though, lies in the wide-angle skewering of support groups and fringe characters more suited to hemming and hawing than biting and sucking. Grades 8-12. --Ian Chipman

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books (April 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152066098
• ISBN-13: 978-0152066093
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #844,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

CATHERINE JINKS was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1963. She grew up in Papua New Guinea and later spent four years studying medieval history at the University of Sydney. After working for several years in a bank, she married a Canadian journalist and lived for a short time in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is now a full-time writer, residing in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales with her husband Peter and their daughter Hannah.Catherine is a three-time winner of the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year award, and has also won a Victorian Premier's Literature Award, the Ena Noel Award for Children's Literature, and an Aurealis Award for Science Fiction. In 2001 she was presented with a Centenary Medal for her contribution to Australian Children's Literature.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Feelings, July 10, 2009

By 

A. Martin - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reformed Vampire Support Group (Hardcover)

I really hate to give this book three stars, because in many ways, it was excellent. Jinks has created vampire characters with severe limitations and obstacles to overcome, and she sticks to the rules she writes. I find this admirable, because a lot of authors like to wriggle their characters out of difficulties and into happiness with a little tweaking of their world's internal logic. Not so with Catherine Jinks. Her vampires fall unconscious instantly at sunrise and stay unconcious until sundown--no matter what they're doing, and no matter how much recap is required to explain all the action they've missed. Her vampires are weak and constantly nauseated (don't read this book with a sore stomach), so that walking up three flights of stairs can wipe them out completely. This drastically limits any action that might have taken place, so the pace is pretty slow.

The vampires are so weak, miserable, and limited that RVSG would be completely depressing if not for the general snarkiness of the main character. Nina has been surrounded by insufferable people for the past thirty years, and she's nearly reached her breaking point. I liked her, but she wasn't quite snarky enough to make this book consistently funny, and the world was so fully realized that the book didn't feel much like a satire either. I ended up feeling so sorry for the vampires that I couldn't really enjoy myself at their expense.

(I realize that this is pretty subjective, actually. Others might find the decrepitude of the vampires absolutely hilarious. I can speak only for myself in this regard.)

RVSG makes a great break from tales of traditional vampires who are rich, powerful, and gorgeous, but I'd have to say that (if done well) the traditional vampires are more fun to read about. Give this book a try, because it's imaginative and original, but don't expect a rollicking good time.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toenails and enzymes, April 20, 2009

By 

Jennifer L. Rinehart (United States of America) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reformed Vampire Support Group (Hardcover)

I was rewarding myself for having such a productive week when I bought this and boy oh boy is this a swell treat.

From the first page I was caught. No, not just by the clever turn of phrase and the hilarious lives these vampires lead, that's a given. I read Evil Genius and loved it too. No, it's the careful way that the characters are revealed and the absurd things they have to do to survive.

The plot is pure gold; Imagine going to a support group for thirty years. Thirty years of seeing and listening to the same small group of people talking about their problems. Now add to that someone who is permanantly in the body of a 15yr old and is the beneficiary of peptalks and advice about her situation; "you are in the denial stage of vampirism, etc."

At it's heart this is a mystery. In the grand tradition of mysteries (at least the ones I like), the heroine has several handicaps, not the least of which is that she lives at home with her mother and cant go outside during the day. She spends her time writing vampire adventure stories.

I don't want to give anything away, truly this is a book to be savored (I devoured it in two days, what can I say, I have no self control).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simpsons of the Vampire World, January 14, 2010

By 

M. Weber "a girl & her books" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Reformed Vampire Support Group (Hardcover)

I'm not swearing Catherine Jinks wrote The Reformed Vampire Support Group as a parody of the Twilight universe. I'm just calling it as I see it. If you hate Twilight, chances are you'll love this book. And if you're Twi-obsessed, well, then, I'll give you a 60% possibility of enjoyment. Consider it Twilight on a bad LSD trip.

What's different you ask? Hmm. Well . . . imagine your mom as a vampire. The mom you know and love and shudder at when she walks around at seven in the morning in curlers and a hair-net, smoking like a moldy hay-stack and ever-complaining about her over-sized goiter. Except rather than a bottle of gin in hand, she's drinking blood.

Weird, right? That's what I'm talking about. No Edwardian sparkles, no super-human strength, no poetic tangents professing the passionate need to resist the smell of the wine barrel, and definitely no Greek god-like physiques going on.

The vampires in this universe never age, but their physical bodies do (or more specific--their physical ailments do). Toenails fall off and stay off, and one's breath is always bad. Add to that the issue of their being terrified of driving, choking, being killed, or interacting with human society on any level and you begin to get the general idea. They hide out in their homes watching TV re-runs and drinking the blood of guinea pigs (which they breed, mind you), attending their once-a-week "I promise to be ashamed of what I am" support group. Thus it is that when one of the members of The Reformed Vampire Support Group gets staked and winds up as a "pile of cat litter" in the bottom of his coffin . . . well, uh . . . maybe you should just read it.