Title: Twi Harder (A Twin Fang Novel)
Authors: Lacy Maran & Kevin Michael
Format: Smashwords ebook provided by author for purpose of review
From Amazon:
Heavy necking. Shirtless hunks. Bad boys with fangs looking to warm your blood rather than suck it. Alice Johnson loves the vampires of fiction. It's the real life vamps she was having trouble with. But when an impossibly hot new vamp falls for Alice, her life will never be the same.
"Twi Harder" is a Young Adult Paranormal Romance that unfolds over Oscar weekend at a luxury celebrity hotel where all the stars have gone vamp.
This book took on a pretty satirical view of Hollywood, paparazzi, vampires, the whole thing. This first third of the book felt very negative to me. The main character, Alice, complained about everything and liked nothing. Granted, she had little reason to be optimistic, but the pessimistic level was a little much for me at times.
Basically vampires live among us, in normal society. Alice is a human working in LA/Hollywood as a waitress in a hotel bar – and she is not an aspiring actress. Recently dumped by her boyfriend, he quickly became a vampire and his singing career skyrocketed. Alice definitely is feeling bitter, and you can totally sense that through most of the story. It’s very ironic how she bashes almost everyone around her for acting so superior, when in her mind she is the superior one.
I don’t know if it was intentional, but it seems that there are some references to actual celebrities - and not all are in the nicest light. It became a game of “let’s figure out who this is”. Some were easy, like the vampire actress Jules Madison who played the “…vampire hooker with a heart of gold”. I thought that part was kind of fun. I think I guessed who a couple were inspired by.
Near the middle to end it became more interesting for me. While it was difficult to keep up with the many characters introduced, it was interesting to see how Alice interacted with them. And throughout the book she has an internal conflict about her ex, and something she can do to get quite a bit of money. The real question is will she or won’t she?
One minute she is thinking about what soulless jerks vampires are, and literally the next she is falling in love with one. Mark seems like a nice guy, and he definitely had feelings for Alice. I would have liked to seen that aspect more in depth than everything else going on. Overall this book was very low on the romance, and what was there was over so quickly that you had better not blink. I’m not sure I would class it in that genre specifically. But it definitely was a different take on the paranormal story. While it wasn’t exactly the type of story I normally read, I am happy I gave it a chance and got to meet Alice. I definitely think she is the type of character that could flourish in a story that is longer than one weekend.
