Book Review: The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Think vampires are romantic, sexy, and powerful? Think again. Vampires are dead. And unless they want to end up staked, they have to give up fanging people, admit their addiction, join a support group, and reform themselves.
Nina Harrison, fanged at fifteen and still living with her mother, hates the Reformed Vampire Support Group meetings every Tuesday night. Even if she does appreciate Dave, who was in a punk band when he was alive, nothing exciting ever happens. That is, until one of group members is mysteriously destroyed by a silver bullet. With Nina (determined to prove that vamps aren't useless or weak) and Dave (secretly in love with Nina) at the helm, the misfit vampires soon band together to track down the hunter, save a werewolf, and keep the world safe from the likes of themselves.

The new fad in YA lit is vampires, called "bit lit" by some, and it was refreshing to read a new take on this genre. Instead of the vampires being strikingly beautiful, like vampires in most YA lit, the characters in this book were basically falling apart. In fact, they make being a vampire seem like a completely miserable existence. Nina attends weekly meetings with a group of other vampires, including the one who bit her, and all is going as well as possible. Until that vampire gets staked...

Nina narrates the story with a dark wit that was easy to appreciate, especially given her current living situation (her mother's basement), and you really grow to feel the pain of trying to live a normal life despite being...well, dead. I really loved the unique spin on the popular genre. I can't count the number of new books I've seen on the shelves lately that contain amazingly beautiful vampires (not that this genre is a bad thing, but I just want to stress how different, in a good way, this book was). I personally would have liked to see a little bit more development between Nina and Dave, particularly because Nina seemed a bit naive about his love for her. Especially after a werewolf was thrown into the mix as a possible romantic partner. Overall, I thought this was a fun read, and am looking forward to reading other books by Jinks.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group
by Catherine Jinks
362 pages
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rating B+