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Undead And Unwed

MaryJanice Davidson

Published 2004            255 pages

Synopsis

Betsy Taylor is having a bad week.  First of all she is made redundant from her secretarial job, and then she is run over and killed in a car accident.  For most people this would at least be the end of the bad week but not for Betsey.  She rises from the dead as a vampire and despite several attempts to make herself dead again she just can’t stay dead.

To make matters worse her new vampire friends seem to think she is their prophesied vampire queen and they want her to help them destroy the mad vampire master Nostrodamus who currently controls all the vampires in the city.  Although Nostrodamus is unpleasant, insane and a cliché of every bad vampire movie Betsy has ever seen, she has other important things to do.  Like shopping for some new clothes as day wear is no longer appropriate attire for her.

On the plus side she has met the devastatingly attractive vampire Sinclair, possibly the most scrumptious man she has ever met dead or alive….

The Review

This book is definitely best described as vampire chick lit.  It is a light weight read with a wafer thin plot but sometimes that is all you want in a book.  The story is fast paced and the book can be read in a matter of hours.  Although Mary Janice Davidson has parodied B-movie vampires very well, the story is entertaining and humorous rather than laugh out loud funny.

Betsy is a great character and an unusual vampire queen.  Even when she rises as a vampire her first thoughts are about the awful clothes, bad shoes and really bad makeup that she was about to be buried in.  Betsy is every thing that vampires usually are not.  She isn’t moody, doesn’t spend her time hanging around mausoleums or creepy mansions, doesn’t want to wear black clothes with red lipstick and nails (unless that comes back into fashion) and doesn’t care for vampire politics and ruling the undead world.  There is no undead angst for Betsy unless she misses the Neiman Marcus midnight madness shoe sale!

The romance element of the plot is fairly understated.  Betsy spends most of the time in the story being really annoyed by Sinclair and there isn’t really much development of their relationship (leaving plenty of scope for the later books.)

All in all I would sum up this book by saying it is the kind of book that makes great holiday reading.  It is a book for any woman who can understand that being fashionable, looking good and having great shoes are important... even if you’re dead.

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