ARC REVIEW: VAMPIRE WEEKEND BY MIKE CHEN

• STAR RATING:  3 stars
• PAGE LENGTH: 368 pages
• DATE PUBLISHED: January 31st 2023 
• PUBLISHER: Harlequin Trade Publishing
• CONTENT WARNINGS: Cancer, blood, homophobia
• IF YOU LIKED THIS, TRY:  Possibly the Mercy Thompson books by Patricia Briggs

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

SYNOPSIS

Being a vampire is far from glamorous…but it can be pretty punk rock.

Everything you’ve heard about vampires is a lie. They can’t fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it’s also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.

At least she’s gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her…situation under wraps), maybe she’ll finally feel like she belongs, too.

Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it’s Ian’s love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection.

But as Ian uncovers Louise’s true identity, things get dangerous–especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor. One that goes beyond just family…one that might just change everything vampires know about life and death forever.

I was given an ARC to Vampire Weekend all the way back in July. I kept putting it off, saying I was going to read it for spooky season in October. But then October came and I hit a slump hard. I think I read maybe two whole books that month, and none of them were what I needed to be reading — ARCs. But time marches onward, and here I am finally finished reading this book.

Vampire Weekend was really not at all like I thought it was going to be. The vampires in this book are neutered in a way that I wasn’t really a fan of at all. I like my vampires sexy, dangerous, and mysterious. The vampires in this book are…not…any…of that. Seriously, the fact that they were vampires almost didn’t really matter besides Louise needing to find way to eat. I’m still just a little baffled that someone would choose to write vampires this way. As boring. This book read more like a bad paranormal series entry than anything remotely like a vampire book that I’m used to. It was okay, but Vampire Weekend is probably not something I’ll be picking up again any time soon.

Louise Chao is a vampire. A punk rock vampire who spends her time working a hospital janitor and hanging out with her dog. Seriously, when we meet her she’s doing nothing remotely interesting. She’s got some serious issues with her family in her past, but I mean…that was it. There was not much else to her. Then we meet her distant nephew, and he’s more interesting but his entire story wraps around his mom who is dying of cancer. There’s a little mystery wrapped up in the general plot of the book, but overall I just wasn’t impressed with this one. It reads very easily, though, which is why I didn’t put it down. Three unimpressed stars.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND comes out JANUARY 31, 2023.

Add to your Goodreads, or preorder at at the following links:

GOODREADS | BOOKSHOP.ORG | AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE

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