VAMPIRE BY AMY MAH: BOOK REVIEW

Vampire
By Amy Mah
ISBN# 9781874192626
Author’s Website:  www.FangsRule.com

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Jessa

*Beware of possible Spoilers*

Synopsis: 

Teenage girls have it rough sometimes what with school, friends, drama, raging hormones, and so on, but imagine what it would be like if you had to put up with all that in addition to being an actual vampire. You try dealing with a bunch of stuffy 18th century elders who want you running around half naked in a sheer nightgown when all you’d rather be doing is decided what to wear on your first date and hoping nobody will notice your latest acne blowout. For a regular girl its perfectly normal to dream about that first crush and a night out that involves holding hands and watching a good movie, but what if you can’t concentrate because you’re too busy wondering what blood type he has running through his veins? Well, welcome to Amy’s life.

Review:

Pros: I enjoyed the fact that the author was trying to make it sound like the book was written straight from the main character and thus had a fresh and natural tone to how the story was told. It was very straightforward and how a story might be told if an actual real life by a rambunctious and moody teenage girl. I like the bluntly honest portrayal of each character as it made you feel like you actually knew the characters and would either love them, hate them, and maybe even give them a good smack upside the head at times to get them to calm down. I understand that the author wanted to make this story very real and personable and she definitely succeeded.

Cons: Some of the very things I enjoyed about this book, also made me despise it. The natural tone of a teenager can come across as immature and obnoxious. Which is reality, but I don’t really care to read an entire novel in this tone.  Some of the dialogue ended up feeling very jumbled and disorganized with typos nearly driving me insane. The manga drawings included throughout were cute, but made me feel like this book would work much better if it was switched over to actual manga form. I’m also a bit of a mythology/folklore snob and the portrayal of these vampires as fuzzy strange cats in heat just rubbed me the wrong way. I can appreciate a unique perspective on vampires (and thank goodness it wasn’t the sparkly nonsense at least), but the mash-up of old school movie vampires and a bunch of feral cat behavior just wasn’t cutting it for me. All in all, switch it over to full manga form and I think I’d like it a whole lot better.