Review: Real Vampires Have Curves

Real Vampires Have Curves by Gerry Bartlett
2.5 stars

Reasons for reading: thought it would be fun to mix chick lit with vampire lit; Triple 8 Challenge

Book description:

What—did you think all vamps were pale, thin and brooding? Don’t I wish.

Me, I just happened to be bloating when a sexy Scotsman sank his teeth into me, so here I am, eternally “full-figured.” On the plus side, Glory St. Claire can rock a corset like nobody’s business. Oh, and as for Angus Jeremiah Campbell III, aka Jeremy Blade? We’ve been on and off again for centuries, currently off. After a couple hundred years we sure know how to press each other’s hot buttons—in good ways and bad.

The whole never-aging thing means that a girl’s gotta keep moving, and I’m headed for Austin and a new business venture: Vintage Vamp’s Emporium. After all, I love cute clothes, and I am an antique. Only problem is, there’s a billionaire techno-freak vampire hunter on the loose. Blade’s in total he-vampire mode, and orders me to move in so he can “protect” me. But I’m sick of the not-so-little woman thing. It’s time for this vamp to explore her own powers . . .

My thoughts: I really wanted to like this one more than I did - look how cute the cover is! But it was, as Randy Jackson would say to an American Idol hopeful, just a'ight for me.

My main problem was the large amount of repetition. Worse, everything being repeated was really irksome. Every chapter Glory had to remind the reader that:

1) She really wants to be independent, you know. She doesn't need Blade to protect her. Yeah, she knows she has his magical guard dog and that he's always rushing to her rescue, but she doesn't need him or anything.

2) She and Blade have been having really hot sex for centuries. And it's still hot.

3) Vamps have a lot of really cool powers that she never bothered to learn, like shape-shifting. And she hates it when other vamps read her mind, but she can't be bothered to learn how to block them. And when she finally does decide to learn them (because her "life" is at stake - pardon the pun) she has to remind the reader that she's working on learning what she didn't learn centuries ago.

4) She's fat.

Hello, I have been reading the book. I managed to grasp all these facts the first time they were mentioned. If you thought maybe it was beyond me, a second time would've been okay. But not over and over and over.

Glory came off as pretty pathetic, combining the worst traits of the worst characters in bad chick lit. Two hot vampire guys are lusting after her and all she can think about is her jiggly butt. She could do all kinds of amazing, powerful things, but she just never bothered to learn. She wants to be independent but rather than having managed to make or save any money over the centuries, she has to live hand to mouth until she finally opens the shop. Now, I did admire her for wanting to make her dream come true and I thought the shop was cool, but hearing her tell everyone how independent she is while sexy uber-vamp Damian finds her the location of her shop/apartment, his sister Florence moves in with her, and Blade soon moves to Austin to look after her, it starts to ring a bit false. I'd have had a much easier time of it if she admitted she loved Blade and, while not wanting to live in his castle and play the meek Scottish lass, she still enjoyed that he looked after her. She does redeem herself a bit in the end by finally using her powers, so I suppose she's grown, but it wasn't quite enough to make up for the litany of lameness.

And I guess I wasn't expecting it to be so Harlequin romancey - the vampire sex, complete with biting and mind-reading, kinda creeped me out.