Thanks to IFLS intern Raechel Schink for this review!
Durst, Sarah Beth. Drink, Slay, Love. Simon and Schuster, Margaret K. McElderry Books (978-144-242-3732). Ages 14 and up.
If you have any young adult readers who enjoy books about
vampires or unicorns--or better yet unicorns who hunt vampires, then Drink
Slay Love is the perfect book for them to read! Other readers who will
enjoy this book will most likely enjoy witty humor, feisty heroines, and a book
that isn’t all that serious.
The main character of the book is a young vampire named Pearl. She is the only
true born daughter of Mother and Daddy, the heads of their vampire Family, kind
of like a clan or pack. The Family needs to beware of the common enemies of
vampires in all the legends out there about them. They will fry to a crisp in
the sunlight. They will burn horribly with even a single drop of holy water. Stakes
through the heart or beheading will kill them. Garlic and other religious
paraphernalia will slow them down quite a bit and annoy them.
One night Pearl
pushes her luck by being rebellious and cutting it close to a vampire’s curfew
– just before dawn – for a before-bed snack from her favorite boy juice box. As
she and the snack are out back of the Dairy Hut, she sees a unicorn, a real
life unicorn! As she tries to confront the pretty sparkly horse, as Pearl names it, the unicorn stabs Pearl through the heart. Amazingly instead of
ending up dead, she is still alive, even after being left by the front door of
the Family’s house! Her family thinks that she has gone crazy as she rants
about unicorns being real.
Slowly over the next few days, Pearl changes – mainly,
she can stand in the sunlight without being burned to a crisp! Daddy and Mother
decide to use her as the Family hunter for a big event. The Family has been
given the honor of hosting the Fealty Ceremony which the vampire King only
throws once every century to welcome the younger vampires into the vampire
court. With this ceremony comes the responsibility of the Family finding enough human snacks to feed the king and his entourage. Thus she is
enrolled and attends the local high school to hopefully find entrance into the
students’ homes to capture enough humans for the feast. Human experiences and
difficulties ensue, all of which leads Pearl
to realize that humans are not only meals, but they have the potential to be
friends with vampires.
Follow Pearl on her journey through discovering what exactly
it means to have a conscience, what it means to really have friends
, and to care about the welfare of others. Durst includes a
lot of twists, a bit of drama, and a whole lot of humor. There is a high
possibility that some Twilight fans may be offended at some of the jokes that
are cracked about Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series, yet the jokes are minimal
and nonthreatening.
Drink Slay Love is a must read for any who find
themselves in need of a fast paced, humorous book about the hilarity of
unicorns hunting vampires and vampires growing a conscience.
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