Sunday, December 20, 2009

Bad Blood-Mari Mancusi

Bad Blood
Mari Mancusi
Berkley Jam, Jan 2010, $9.99
ISBN: 9780425232644

It is not easy being a seventeen years old high school student especially having a boyfriend who is a thousand years old vampire. Complicating matters for Magnus the vampire head of the Blood Coven and human Sunny McDonald is she does not want to convert while his followers demand he accept a blood mate to co-rule; humans are forbidden. While he conceals his destiny from her, she learns all about it from Rhodes Scholar Oxford University magna cum laude Jane Johnson, the coven’s chosen one.

Sunny has issues beyond jealousy though that is what Magnus assumes is eating at her. Instead Sunny wonders how someone graduating from prestigious Oxford with honors, knows nothing, even common information, about her school and teachers. Worse she dresses trashy and acts as if the educated are beneath her contempt. Something is not right so when the Coven heads to Vegas for the blood mate convention, Sunny and her vampiric-slayer twin sister Rayne secretly go with them to prove Jayne is a fake before the binding exchange of vows occurs.

Sunny is a pure blood normal American teen who has accepted that vampire exist with a calm demeanor even as she is the readers prime escort into a fascinating sub-culture that resides within the greater society. Volunteer blood donors insure the edict of not killing humans is enforced. Sunny is somewhat hurt that Magnus blows away her concerns rejecting the initial circumstantial evidence she provides without listening. She vows to save him anyway and find a mortal teenage male who she could care for. Although campy and amusing, the latest Blood Coven young adult urban fantasy (see Stake That, Girls That Growl and Boys That Bite) is a splendid vampire tale.

Harriet Klausner

No comments: