review: Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst

pub date: September 13, 2011
publisher: Simon and Schuster
source: Simon and Schuster Gally Grab
format: digital
appeals: vampires, high school, prom, romance,
content: 4 or 5 swears and some violence


thoughts:
this is my third Sarah Beth Durst novel. I LOVED Ice, thought Enchanted Ivy was okay, and Drink, Slay, Love is right in the middle of those two. All of Durst's books are different and original and I really like that about her as a writer.


Drink, Slay, Love started out slow. I didn't really care about the characters, or even Pearl's story till 40 or 50 pages in, but once I reached that point my pace of reading picked up with the plot. It was really exciting.


I thought Pearl's development as a character was realistic and that made the story real (as real as a vampire stabbed by a unicorn can be), even with odd and sometimes silly plot developments. I don't read a lot of vampire books, so I might be off about this, but I thought these vampires were intriguing and different and new. They were really heartless and Durst does a good job of showing how evil these vampires are compared to human standards. It made for great conflict.

So overall, this was a fun book. I recommend. And though I gave it three apples, it's more like a 3.5.


summary:
Pearl is a sixteen-year-old vampire... fond of blood, allergic to sunlight, and mostly evil... until the night a sparkly unicorn stabs her through the heart with his horn. Oops.


Her family thinks she was attacked by a vampire hunter (because, obviously, unicorns don't exist), and they're shocked she survived. They're even more shocked when Pearl discovers she can now withstand the sun. But they quickly find a way to make use of her new talent. The Vampire King of New England has chosen Pearl's family to host his feast. If Pearl enrolls in high school, she can make lots of human friends and lure them to the King's feast -- as the entrees.


The only problem? Pearl's starting to feel the twinges of a conscience. How can she serve up her new friends—especially the cute guy who makes her fangs ache—to be slaughtered? Then again, she's definitely dead if she lets down her family. What's a sunlight-loving vamp to do?