"Wait till Your Vampire Gets Home," Michele Bardsley

Pros: Humor; enjoyable plot
Cons: Creepy age factor; some plot devices
Rating: 2 out of 5

Review copy courtesy of Penguin Group.
Visit Michele Bardsley’s site.

Sigh. WordPress ate the review I wrote of this several hours ago, so I’m going to do my best to reconstruct it. I might be a bit… concise, since this is my second trip through.

I first encountered Michele Bardsley’s series about supernaturals inhabiting the town of Broken Heart in Because Your Vampire Said So. What better introduction to Bardsley’s unique brand of romantic, erotic humor than the discovery that the prophesied queen of vampires and werewolves is a trash-talking trailer-living single-mom hairdresser?

This time, Libby Monroe has come to town. She and her parents are paranormal investigators come to check out rumors about Broken Heart. Everything immediately goes wrong for Libby, however. She loses contact with her parents and gets chased by werewolves. She’s rescued by a vampire, only to be chased by a zombie. Then two fighting dragons land on top of them, one of them kisses her, and the other tries to chase her down.

To add insult to injury, the townspeople don’t want to let her leave town, and now when she gets angry… things start blowing up or lighting on fire. She and sexy vampire widower and single dad Ralph have a bizarrely overactive attraction to each other. And she still can’t reach her parents.

There are some good things about Wait till Your Vampire Gets Home—we see more of the other characters from previous books, and there’s more of Bardsley’s rather unique style of humor. I don’t recommend starting out with this book as it would be tough to keep track of the menagerie of characters if you haven’t met them before. However, despite some of the good stuff in here (like an interesting plot about an evil dragon who wants his sister’s powers), I can’t really recommend this one.

There are a couple of small problems, to start with. Ralph feels like a pretty flat character and he doesn’t come across as being old or experienced enough to be a 30-something widower with kids. There are plot points that feel like bald plot devices or deus ex machinae—one of Libby’s co-workers just happens to have access to some insanely advanced technology, for example, with no more explanation than some hint about his probably having belonged to an unnamed secret government whatever in the past. Come to think of it, I don’t think we ever did find out why Libby couldn’t reach her parents for a while.

What really bugged me about this one, however, is Libby herself. At one point Patsy accuses her of acting like a twelve-year-old, and she’s absolutely right. Throughout the entire book Libby comes across as anything from 12 to 15—but not older. Combine that with the fact that this is an erotic romance, and you end up with something that feels utterly creepy and just plain WRONG. Every time things heated up I found myself getting very creeped out. No matter how much I tried to remind myself that Libby was an adult, I couldn’t buy it—she just didn’t read that way.

If the above bothers you, then unfortunately I’d recommend skipping this particular installment in the series.