A Girl's Guide to Vampires by Katie Macalister

So as I wait for Dracula, Camilla, and The Vampyre to arrive, I had to continue reading – and little was left in my book bag besides some frilly stuff. So The Girl’s Guide to Vampires is what I read.

This book unfortunately, was sitting on my nightstand for about a week. In two days I got through about 4 pages. I finally committed myself to read it. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Joy and her best friend Roxy embark on an adventure to the Czech Republic to look for Roxy’s favorite author who writes vampire romance novels. Joy reads the books too, but she doesn’t believe that these vampires actually exist; unlike Roxy. Roxy is bent on finding a “dark one” and Joy sullenly agrees to attend a Halloween Goth fair with her.

Of course, along the journey they meet a few handsome men, some creepy, some who think they are vampires, and maybe one who actually is. They get themselves in to some trouble and try to solve a mystery or two along the way.

The first thirty pages or so I found Joy to be quite hilarious. She is witty and sarcastic and is skeptical about vampires existing and her friend being able to help them find the love of their lives through the power of “the goddess” even though she sometimes reads rune stones as a hobby. I laughed out loud quite a bit.

I was also quite pleased to find that her ideal man was a mix of the best assets of Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, and Oded Fehr. These three men have been key players in my fantasy and was quite surprised that someone else would group these guys together as well. But then again, who can resist the charming and sexy characters of Darcy, Snape, and the Magi from the Mummy? I’ve loved them all.

I plan on reading the next books in the series, but I was a little bit annoyed by some of the plot and characters. The biggest thing that turned me off was Roxy’s constant talk about “the dark ones” and the 7 acts of bonding together the dark one and his beloved. I was kind of embarrassed for her and she rambled on about it to strangers. And although the “throbbing member” talk wasn’t as detailed and riddled throughout the book as most romances, I could have done without the description of how big the guy’s “copulation organ” (quoted from a hilarious spam email I received the other day, not the book) or just how sexually compatible they are together.

The book doesn’t end on a completely happy note and I am curious as to what happens with some of the characters in the next two.