What is it with ditz moms? The heroine of Don’t Talk Back To Your Vampire, as well as the heroine of Maureen Child’s latest book, More Than Fiends, are both single moms who behave more like their daughters’ BFF than parents. While reading this book, there were times I wished June Cleaver would show up and bring Marion Cunningham and Claire Huxtable with her. Now those ladies knew how to be Moms!

Broken Heart, Oklahoma is a town full of paranormals. We have vampires – full blooded ones and Turn-Bloods (humans turned into vampires). Then there are lycans who look human but can turn into wolves, and Roma, who look human but can turn into wolves only on the full moon. Lycans protect vampires, Roma hunt them. There are also a few humans left in Broken Heart, some of whom are donors to the vampires. Our heroine is Eva LeRoy, single mom, high school drop out and town librarian. I will pause while all the librarians who sweated their way to an MLS compose themselves. Eva was turned by Lorcan, a handsome brooding vampire (is there any other kind?) who at the time he turned her was suffering from The Taint – a mysterious vampire disease. Lorcan is untainted now, although he’s still brooding and guilty over having turned Eva. For her part, Eva holds no grudge and thinks Lorcan is really hot. Eva’s daughter Tamara is not a vampire, but she’s cool with the whole scene.

Eva isn’t just an average Turn-Blood. No, she has the very rare ability to talk to animals. This makes her the target of the very bad guys (the evil vampire Nefertiti). Then she get infected with the Taint and her daughter Tamara falls in love with a Roma boy. There are monsters afoot in Broken Heart (evil monsters, that is) and it’s up to Eva to get better so she can help defeat them. Meh. Just meh. That’s about my reaction to Don’t Talk Back To Your Vampire. It’s not as though the book is poorly written – it isn’t. It zips along merrily, but I couldn’t stay focused. I kept putting it down, picking it up, putting it down, picking it up. This went on for over a week. Finally I told myself that I had to finish the book and write the review, so I did, but I had to make myself do it. I simply couldn’t work up any enthusiasm either positive or negative.

As a character, Lorcan was totally meh. There’s only so many talk, dark, brooding vampires one can take before they all melt together. There was nothing to set Lorcan apart as interesting, and he remained a brooding blob throughout the book.

Eva was likable, but kind of silly, and I didn’t quite understand everything about her character or history. At one point she mentions that she is a high school drop out and doesn’t even have her GED. Now, Eva is obviously an autodidact and brainy under her ditz exterior, so why didn’t she bother to get her degree? As for her being the town librarian, it is evidently a job passed down from parent to child in the female line in Eva’s family – but in the real world it doesn’t work that way; librarian jobs aren’t like English titles, after all.

Oh well, I have just got a stack of new books to review and surely there will be one in there that will engage me. I think I have overdosed on the cute and funny vampire genre, and I don’t want to see another one for some time in the future.