A review by malslibrary1901
When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke

slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

This book caught my eye at Barnes and Noble. The cute cover and synopsis had me so excited. Now I regret spending money on this.  This reads as a rough draft of a novel. The author constantly used "Obvi" in sentences which was very irritating.  We meet Lily's best friend and for the remainder of the book Lily always says "my BFF" which was annoying because the audience already knows that. It came off as the author trying to convince the audience that these two characters are best friends without actually building up their relationship at all.  Lily as the FMC is just an idiot.  The author was clearly trying to write a strong character but failed miserably.  Lily gets turned into a vampire on accident and then proceeds to not pay attention or listen to anything Tristan has to say about being a vampire. She just goes around New York like she knows everything.  She's rude to everyone. She hates her body so much that it consumes her life. She is incapable of seeing her so called best friend as a person who could have a bad day or have bad shit happen all because she is thin.  Like Lily is really out here thinking anyone who is thin has a perfect life, like come on.  The sex scenes were so badly written and overshadowed by Lily's internalized fatphobia. She can't fathom Tristan actually liking a plus size woman at all which was insane.  She constantly jumped to conclusions that were wrong because she has no critical thinking skills.  All of this is also made worse by the author telling not showing through out the book, so much so that it doesn't read as a novel at all.  Its more like someone just telling you a really long boring story.  There's supposed to be a plot but it's overshadowed by all the fatphobia and negative self talk.  The characters are all flat and one dimensional.  The overall conflict with the vampire counsel was over in about a minute and really had no effect on the story. Overall this was a terrible read and I would not recommend this to anyone. Especially anyone who is struggling with their own body image.   It reads like a boomer wrote a book about a millennial plus size woman but has no idea what it's like to be a millennial or plus sized.  So it just comes off as cringy and fatphobic.   I regret my life choices that led me to read this. 
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