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Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home

Michele Bardsley

Published 2008           283 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

Its one thing to date a single father with emotional baggage… but quite another to date one who’s dead.

Scratching out obituaries and wedding announcements will be the death of me, which is why I, Libby Monroe, need a major scoop to prove my journalistic chops. That’s how I end up in Broken Heart, Oklahoma, chasing down bizarre rumours of strange goings-on – and finding vampires, lycanthropes, and zombies.

I never expected to fall in lust, but sexy vampire Ralph Genessa is far too irresistible. The fact that he’s the loving, sexy father of twin boys drives the nail into my coffin and wins my undying love. Only this town is being torn in two by a war between the undead, and I may be the only thing that can hold Broken Heart together.

The Review

Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home is the fourth novel in Michele Bardsley’s light-hearted Broken Heart paranormal romance series.  I have to be honest here and say that I haven’t read any of the pervious novels in this series, so when I say, “While this is a stand alone story featuring the romance of Libby and Ralph new readers may benefit from reading the books in series order.”  You can trust me on this one - I know what I’m talking about.

As a reader new to Broken Heart, Oklahoma I found that characters were thrown into the story at a frantic pace with little explanation of who they were and why they were there.  I felt like I was at a party where everybody is already friends and I was the only person who didn’t know anyone. Worse, it was like I’d also turned up late and missed all the introductions.  The book does come equipped with 2 glossaries at the back which, if I’d read them first, would have gone a long way to explaining the creatures and mythology used in the story but I didn’t read them first and they don’t explain who the characters are and their relationships anyway.  That is knowledge that the author has assumed you already know.

The story is narrated in first person by Libby Monroe, who contrary to the book’s summary is actually a paranormal investigator not a journalist.  Her paranormal investigative background means that she adapts well when faced with cast-iron proof of the existence of vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, fairies and dragons.  Ironically, the only mythical being that she didn’t find in Broken Heart was Bigfoot, which was what she was looking for in the first place!

Broken Heart, Oklahoma is possibly the most paranormal place in all America.  In addition to the high incidence rate of paranormal activity, there is also a high percentage of single parent vampires in Broken Heart.  This is the result of an unfortunate incident when a sick vampire ran amok one night and turned a whole bunch of human single parents into vampires.   It is this single parent vampire romance that is the theme for this series of books.

The romance between Libby and Ralph in Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home is fun and light-hearted, while the paranormal elements of this story are more cute than scary.  This book will appeal to fans of MaryJanice Davidson, Katie MacAlister and Kathy Love since it has the same mix of fun comedy, paranormal fantasy and romance that readers find in their books.

As a reader new to the world of Broken Heart don’t think that I got the most from this story.  While there is nothing objectionable about Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home I just felt like I was missing something. I believe that if you are already a fan of this series there is no reason that you shouldn’t enjoy this latest instalment.  Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home intrigued me enough to make me want to read the earlier books in this series because I’m sure that I’m missing something here and I want to know what it is…

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