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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vamp-Tastic!, October 7, 2008
Vamps is a "bloody" excellent book that can hang with the rest of the vampire best. These bloodsuckers have style.
Lilith Todd is rich, beautiful and fabulous. She comes from a very powerful and wealthy family, so she always gets what she wants, whether it's new shoes or the best looking guy. She is the envy of all the girls at Bathory Academy where only the most elite vampires of society are able to attend. That is, until Cally came along.
Cally Monture is powerful and pretty, but let's just say that she's a little less Prada and a little more Payless. Her day to day dilemmas include mortgage payments and subway fare. She lives with her mother and has never met her father. Her good grades and mysterious connections grant her access to Bathory Academy, but she has no desire to be a part of that snobby world. The best she can do is grin and bear it.
From day one at school, things can only be described as nightmarish and humiliating. She doesn't fit in here at all. Even though they all wear the same uniform, she knows the rest of the girls can sense that she is not like them, and they show it with their cruelty. She especially has problems with queen-bee Lilith Todd.
Cally and Lilith had met once before when a night in the park turned tragic. It nearly ended with both of them getting staked by Van Helsings, a group of vampire hunters. It is because of this chance encounter that their animosity towards each other seems to escalate with each passing hour. It's bad enough that Cally feels like she has to hide her true heritage, but when she has to deal with Lilith's bad attitude and jealousy, it makes for a pretty rough semester. Then there's the fact that Cally's old school left her playing academic catch-up with the rest of the Bathory girls, making her an even bigger target for mocking. Things can't get any worse for Cally, right? Well, not unless possibly being in love with someone who may have tried to kill you is bad. It's going to be a long year.
Vamps blends the glamour and scandal of high society with the gothic darkness of vampire legend. It's a deliciously vamp-tastic beginning to a series that is well worth keeping up with. Book two, Night Life, will be flying onto shelves in January of 2009. I can't wait to sink my teeth into it. And that's a compliment, coming from a vegetarian.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bratty Little Vampires, August 7, 2010
I did enjoy this book: I'm a big fan of vampire fiction and I enjoyed its light fluffiness, as well as its humor. I simply wish there could have been more depth: both to the characters and to the plot. The vampire hunters did not get enough stage time and the romance between Cally and Peter was unbelievably fast. I understand that one needs to conserve words in a young adult novel, but it could have gone on longer.
It was amusing to watch the vampires, with their incredible shallow selfishness, waste their long, long lives on shopping and bitchy power plays, but it was hard to emphathize with any of the characters: almost all of them were just too vain and nasty. For example, when Lilith's best friend is killed, what she worries about most is whether her father will cut her credit cards.
Still, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Lilith. She does show genuine emotion over her friend's death, and she seems very insecure: she constantly has to look at herself in her secret mirror just to make sure she is still there. She's awful, and I'd hate to have to deal with her in real life, but from the distance of the page I can see that she's a lonely, neglected child who has never been taught how to have a real relationship with anyone. She seems secretly very miserable and longing to escape, but she doesn't know how. I look forward to seeing how she developes as the series continues.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Vamps, May 3, 2010
Rate: 3.5
I had this is my book shelf since last year. Thank goodness I finally came around reading it. I know. I know the cover looks like more of a glamor shop and therefore the contents is probably all whack.There I go again with judging the cover. Vamps is nothing like that sure there's still high end New York fashion and high maintenance princess type characters, shallow big egos and selfish.
Lilith, Jules, Carmen, Sergei, Tanith, Melinda, and Oliver are among those vampire family they call Old Blood. They are considered the ruling class of their society. The most powerful and wealthiest of all of them. As usual they are young, rich and fabulous. Lilith is you typical Mean Girl leader. Behind her bravado is an insecure teenage girl, so she look down on most of her peers and bully them into fearing her. After a situation at their usual party spot, the Belfry, Lilith and company was temporary ban until the problem get sorted out. Bored and looking for adventure they decided to go slumming at the nearby Greenwich Village to snack on some drug dealers or prostitute. But they weren't the only ones who have the same idea, a New Blood, (meaning a vampire that is a member of a family that was stripped of bloodrights during battle) or they assumed she was a New Blood from her fashion stand point. Her name is Cally a spirited and talented halfling. She is what they called the Stormgatherer with vampire blood. Their cat fight was interrupted when the Van Helsings showed up killing almost killing them. The casualty lost one One Blood teenager, Lilith best friend and from then on a rivalry between Cally and Lilith was born.
I told my friend. hey this book has our favorite vampire hunter. And she's like..."Buffy?", I wanted to smack her I do but I cannot blame her, I don't remember the last book I read featuring them. We dearly love Buffy we do, but we agreed that the best vampire hunter written in fiction are the Van Helsings. So I am glad that they exist in this book If I haven't read a lot of vampire books, I would have put this book down. There was a scene where Lilith was in tears about daddy cutting up his credit card than her best friend dying. Ridiculous right? But I am used to their snotty behavior now and this kind of behavior is not too shocking anymore. There's a cliche attraction between Cally and Peter Van Helsing but I am intrigued nonetheless. I'd love to share more of the plot but that will be giving away the whole story, so I'll shut up now. Conclusion: I like where the story is going and I am definitely interested on finding out what's going to happen next.
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