Blood Candy
Matthew Tomasetti
Brian Casimiro

Review brought to you by OBS staff member Heidi

Young Candy Shuler is fresh out of high school and looking for some fun.  She uses a fake ID and her sexy outfit to get into the bars of her choice.  Maybe she should have quit while she was ahead.  In walks the biggest dork she’s ever seen, Rupert.  He comes up beside her and offers to buy her a drink and then she sees a beautiful man in his place, the effects of a vampire’s glamour.  She ends up leaving the bar with him and is later saved by another bar patron, Tinch, but not before Rupert bites her.

Tinch and his friend, Jimmy, are ready to take her home when they realize that Rupert hasn’t given up on Candy.  He and his brother show up at the diner Tinch, Jimmy, and Candy stop off at and Rupert tries to reclaim Candy for his own.  Tinch stays and fights as Jimmy runs Candy to safety.  That is where Candy discovers her heroes are actually shapeshifters!

Tinch and Jimmy end up taking her to the kennel, a place where they live with a group of shapeshifters that call themselves the misfits.  Tinch leaves to take care of some business and tells the others to stay put.  But when Rupert starts calling Candy and making it clear that he knows where she is, the misfits know they have to do something.

They end up meeting with another vampire family that is willing to help them, but whose side are they really on?

When I first read the blurb to this book, I thought that maybe it would be written in a Christopher Moore’s love story style; crude humor and an interesting take on the vampire genre.  Instead, I got what appears to be a spoof on all things vampires and werewolves.  I saw many things that were reminiscent of Twilight and True Blood, too much for me to believe it could possibly be accidental.  From Tinch telling Candy that Rupert wanted to “do bad things to you” (queue up the True Blood theme song), to the treaty between the vampires and shapeshifters, and the vampire family that doesn’t eat humans named the Mullins and then having the Magister called in…there was just too much True Blood and Twilight stuff going on to be ignored.  This felt like a Scary Movie type spoof of the vampire world.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been a big fan of spoofs and this book was not an exception.

I found Candy to be VERY annoying.  As I read on I felt that maybe even she was part of the spoof that she seemed to be a mix of Bella and Sookie.  She was having trouble choosing between a nerdy shapeshifter and sexy vampire, Blake.  And then two vampires had fed on her and she was trying to fight a blood bond.  She was about as dumb as they come and it annoyed me how the shapeshifters are putting themselves in danger to save her and yet she sits there and calls them dorks and laughs in their faces.  It was awfully amazing how quickly she could go from kissing Jimmy to wanting to be with Blake.  I don’t think she was looking for Mr. Right, but instead for Mr. whoever is available at the moment.  I have to agree with White Paul, I would have given her up to the vampires in a heartbeat.

As for the misfits, they just all kind of blended in together to me and really didn’t bring much to the story.  I found the characters (Candy included) to be one-dimensional and boring.  And whenever the misfits were talking I felt like I was in junior high boys locker room, where talks of large craps and penises sent them into a fit of giggles.

There were also several scenes in the book that I just didn’t understand the purpose of for instance, when the misfits were sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons.  When everyone was trying to figure out what game to use for the challenge I thought for sure that it was where the Dungeons and Dragons would come in, but nope they played basketball and left me scratching my head a little bit.

This book may appeal to those who like spoofs, but it just wasn’t my cup of AB positive.