Drink, Slay, Love By: Sarah Beth DurstRating: Incredibly AWESOME
Age Group: 15+
Summary (from Amazon.com): Pearl is your typical sixteen-year-old vampire—until the night a unicorn stabs her through the heart with his horn. Oops. Now she’s experiencing a number of alarming symptoms: noticing her own reflection, feeling sympathy for a human victim, and being able to withstand the sun. Pearl’s immunity to sunlight thrills her family, who enroll her in high school so she can lure home tasty friends. Pearl quickly discovers that high school is very similar to vampire culture with its rigid rules, clear social hierarchy, and a might-makes-right attitude. But having a conscience makes it hard to cope with an evil plot the Vampire King has in store for the local humans. Will Pearl overcome her bloodsucking instincts in favor of her newly acquired conscience?
My Thoughts: This book was simply amazing. First off, this is a very classical portrayal of vampires. They are cruel and heartless, and they don’t care who has to die so long as they get to live. And that is very refreshing. In their culture no amount of lenience is allowed. If you break the rules or are disrespectful in any way, they you are punished, likely with torture. But even while this book includes such horrific details, it still manages to be incredibly sarcastic and funny. Seriously, there was a scene where Pearl is wondering why detention is so terrifying, and that maybe it’s like that time her mother locked her in a dark room for an extended period of time with not food and where there was no noise. This scene was quite scary because of the way she described the torture, but at the same time I couldn’t help but laugh at its comparison to detention. The way she talks about torture as if it’s the same thing as shopping for shoes shows just how much cruelty is a part of her life and the vampire culture. And to me these details are incredible and they make the story so much richer. Not only was the writing witty and diverse, the plot was great. I was pulled in and I couldn’t put it down. There weren’t any slow points that got bogged down by the monotony of high school, and the end was perfect (in my opinion of course). And I loved all of the characters. They were very well defined and fun, even the background characters. I particularly loved Matt and Zeke. Pearl was splendidly sarcastic and the way the author writes her character is believable and so much fun! While she gains a conscience she doesn’t change all at once. She is confused about these new feelings, but she doesn’t change her priorities. And that’s how it would happen. People don’t change everything about themselves all at once, it takes time. Small steps lead up to a character redefining moment, and that is what happened here. And the unicorn twist? I just loved it! It’s a unique spin from a classical perspective (if that makes sense? It sounded better in my head…). All in all, I would definitely recommend this book, especially to people who like vampire themes but are looking for something new.
