Book Review: When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke

When Life Gives You Vampires by Gloria Duke is a contemporary paranormal romance. Twenty-five year old Lily Baines is used to waking up hungover, overweight, and underemployed. Waking up with fangs? Not so much. But when it turns out a little light necking has more serious consequences than she ever imagined, Lily's determined to get to the bottom of it. Tristan hadn't meant to turn Lily-it's against vampire law-but now that she's here, they need to team up to save their hides. They strike a truce, fending off other vampires, Lily's work-rival-turned-slayer, and her mother's tone-deaf romance and fitness advice-all while Lily faces down her insecurities about the fact that she lives in a diet-obsessed world with a body that will never age, never die, and never change. Can she learn to love the (plus size) woman she'll be forever more?

When Life Gives You Vampires had a fun premise and a lot of things going for it. In general, I liked the main character ad thought her best friend and the quality of that friendship was fantastic. I liked the honesty and heart to hearts they had together, and Lily's honesty with herself.  I thought some of her contemplating her size and hang ups was well done and on point, however as a larger girl myself I felt like it was overdone and maybe could have been handled differently or left out all together in some scenes. I also felt the male characters all fell a bit flat, very little depth in comparison with the female characters, more functions of the story rater than full fledge characters in their own right. I liked most of the plot twists and storyline ideas, but felt like focusing on one or two at a time rather than all of them in a single book might have made for a more engaging read. Since so much of the book is Lily's coming to terms with herself, perhaps some of the story could have been saved for a second book and more time could have been spent in her figuring things out with her best friend and mother rather than vampiric drama. There is so much more room for sequels, that I felt that some of the storylines could easily have been put on hold for them. I did enjoy the read, and it was entertaining, but I see so much potential for it to be even better that it was a little disappointing in some regards.

When Life Gives You Vampires is a entertaining read with great potential. I look forward to seeing what the author does next.