Book Review: Joe Vampire by Steven Luna

I mentioned in one of my post - Book Riot Live posts that I met three cutie patootie authors from Dapper Press and fell hook, line, and sinker for their schpiel. Schpiel is apparently not a word. But, I guess neither is patootie. 

Well, Joe Vampire is the second Kenya- is- a- sucker- for - a- good- sales- pitch book. It's a story of an average Joe (yep) who gets bitten and changed into a vampire. Before the bite, Joe is a bit of a pushover with a history of being run over by friends and bitches. Seriously, his ex- girlfriends are bitches and Joe has a clever way of nicknaming them that I might steal for my own purposes. After he's bitten, he's trying to be the same loser but might just have to get a backbone and make some meaningful connections with people. In the meantime, he's going to blog about it.

Yes, the chapters are set up (as in label) as if they are blog posts. There are zero people about whom I would sit down and just read 247 pages of their blog, so the concept kind of bugged me. Once I was able to get past that, there was a glaring plot hole of Joe wanting to keep his little experience on the hush- hush but blabbing everything into the interwebs. This plot hole is not left dangling, so that was a relief. 

Joe's blog takes us through how he's dealing with all This, his life, his job, and his relationships while trying to maintain his sense of morality and cope with the proverbial blue balls of staying off the people- meat. His friends and co-workers think he's a crack- head. And they aren't any better at keeping his new- found fangs a secret than he is. And so, shit hits the fan. Not literally, though there is a lot of talk about poop in this twist on a classic monster tale. But I guess that's actually better than there being sparkly skin, but I digress. 

Joe Vampire is a quick, light - hearted (mostly) read and there's enough action and Oh! moments to keep you moving along, with only a few spots of ho-humness (most notably the first chapter). There's some good wisdom about how we are masters of your own destiny regardless of the shit (literal and otherwise) you have to deal with and that we all get by a little easier with some help from our friends. And that it's never to late to stop being a D-bag. 

The Whole Bloody Story is available in Kindle version for four bucks. Now, everyone go out and buy his stuff so that Mr. Luna can get famous and I can hock his autograph on The eBay.