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I need to stop reading books labeled “paranormal”. The damn things sell like half-price hotcakes
at Denny’s, though, so authors and publishers keep churning ‘em out. Much like the aforementioned hotcakes most of
these books are ephemeral and fluffy and make you feel nauseous and shamefaced
if you consume too many.
I blame Anne Rice. It
is her fault that I am interested at all in snotty urban vampires. Granted, the teenage me liked The Vampire Lestat much more than did
the adult me. But shoot, as a teenager that book checked ALL of my adolescent,
angsty boxes. Vampire? Check. Rock star? Double check! Broody, handsome protagonist? Triple check with a heart flutter and a
girlish scream. It’s true that Anne Rice has gotten an overinflated sense of
her own literary pulchritude. She was
one of the first mainstream authors to popularize the genre, however, so Anne
gets a pass.
This book gets no such license. This was my first foray into Melissa de la
Cruz’s world—it will also be my last. I
could not finish this book because the writing was abysmal. Maybe she is trying to sound hip, but to
describe your main characters as “ripped” or “badass” just seems indolent. We can infer these things if the writing is
good, thank you very little. The author exhibits
a marked juvenile obsession with wealth--the book contains endless descriptions
of pricey food and designer clothing. For those of us for whom a Ford Focus is
a major purchase reading about shallow, prosperous douchecanoes makes me get
stabby. The main characters make the Kardashians seem like models of depth and
moral turpitude. I got fed up about
halfway through—there isn’t enough alcohol on the planet to make this book
palatable. Damn you, Anne Rice.
