Insatiable by Meg Cabot

 
Disclaimer:  I am a fan of Meg Cabot.  I enjoy many of her books (not all) and I think she writes fun, quirky stories.  So I really wanted to enjoy Insatiable.  It's a vampire story by an author I enjoy!  What could go wrong?  Only a few things.

The story focuses on Meena, a writer for a soap opera called Insatiable.  When her new boss wants to do a vampire storyline, she gets upset because there are too many vampire stories out there.  While out walking the dog in the middle of the night, she meets a mysterious man who saves her from a swarm of bats - in the middle of New York City.  He sweeps her into a quick and intense relationship before telling her the truth about who - and what - he is.

The good . . . Everything moves along quickly and the supporting characters are quirky and fun, despite being slightly annoying.  The story builds off the historical story of Vlad the Impaler and I enjoyed the more traditional vampire traits - as seen in Bram Stoker's Dracula.  The historical take on things was interesting a different from what I've been reading.  I also appreciated that Lucian was not completely reformed.  He wasn't attacking innocents but he had a temper and he wasn't perfect.  Meena recognized this and that was good too.  It's nice to see a realistic heroine. 

The bad. . . The writing was slightly choppy with needless descriptions.  We (the readers) don't need to be told that Jon is her brother at end of the book.  We've been reading, we know this.  Jon is a major character.  That annoyed me.  The whole story took place in a matter of days which didn't give a lot of time to build a romance.  I'm assuming that this is the start of a series and the end was definitely left open to a sequel.  I do like a more solid ending.  Despite that, I will be reading the next book that comes along.  I'm interested enough to continue but not excited enough to mark my calender. 

Vampire fans may like the "pure" version of the vamps in the story but I don't know that it will satisfy.   I guess we'll just have to wait for next summer.