Drink Slay Love by Sarah Beth Durst

Book Jacket

Pearl is a sixteen-year-old vampire, fond of blood, allergic to sunlight, and mostly evil...until the night a sparkly unicorn stabs her through the heart with his horn.  Oops.

Her Family think she was attacked by a vampire hunter (because, obviously, unicorns don't exist) and they're shocked she survived.  They're even more shocked when Pearl discovers she can now withstand the sun.  But they quickly find a way to make use of her new talent.  The vampire king of New England has chosen Pearl's Family to host his feast.  If Pearl enrolls in high school, she can make lots of human friends and lure them to the king's feast--as the entrees.

The only problem?  Pearl's starting to feel the twinges of a conscience.  How can she serve up her new friends--especially the cute guy who makes her fangs ache--to be slaughtered?  Then again, she's definitely dead if she lets down her Family.  What's a sunlight-loving vamp to do?

Review

With a title that mocks Eat Pray Love and is about a vampire being horned by a unicorn, I was really looking forward to a cracktastic fun read.  Unfortunately, the book was not as funny as I wanted it to be, but neither did it manage to be dramatic or the least bit suspenseful.

There were two things I liked:  Durst's description of Pearl being in the sunlight for the first time (she was born a vampire, not made, so it was the very first time for her).  It was beautiful and felt very real.  I also loved the idea of were-unicorns.

Unforutnately, I really want someone else to write a story about were-unicorns.  And that's never a good sign.

The characters never felt realistic.  Nearly all the high schooler's dialogue was so outrageously "witty" that I couldn't take them seriously.  Many plot threads had the potentail for drama but mostly fell through.  There were hints that vampires have consciences even without being staked by a unicorn, and that would have been fascinating to explore!  But less than twenty pages after explicitly mentioning this, the door to examining it was closed. 

I wanted a lot more out of this book than I got.

Two out of five bad proms.

Release Date: September 2011
Reading Level: Grade 9+
Where In Dunlap Public Library's Collection: YPL DUR