Book review - The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

Nina’s been stuck at fifteen years old since 1973, when she was turned into a vampire. She’s also been stuck in a vampire support group with a group of vampires she’s sick of, including Casimir, the one who turned her. Nina may find other vampires irritating and hate going to their Tuesday evening meeting, but when they find one of their group staked, she realises it could get a whole lot worse. Rising to the challenge, the group are determined to find the slayer. Along the way, they get entangled with a computer geek, a couple of thugs, and a lot of adventure. And Nina discovers that maybe vampires aren’t as bad as she thought.

Mostly from the title, I was expecting The Reformed Vampire Support Group to be a fun vampire parody with not much plot. Instead it’s a humorous story full of adventure and interesting characters. It’s incredibly refreshing to encounter vampires that aren’t superhuman, sexy people who can do everything. Instead, Catherine Jinks makes vampirism a kind of handicap. Because they don’t drink human blood, the vampires aren’t very strong. The characters of the vampires, especially their self-elected leader Sanford, make the group seem like a bickering parish council or something.

The idea of being stuck with people that you would never choose to be stuck with, talking the same thing over and over isn’t a nice one. Nina may have lived for fifty-one years, but in many ways she’s still fifteen and the rest of the group treat her like it. This is extra annoying when she decided that something is the right thing to do and the rest of the group assume it’s because she has a teenage crush with no evidence. However, Nina’s more than up to challenge of proving to them all how capable she is and I love her attitude. She’s understandably scared, especially of being shot – she wouldn’t die, but losing half a brain or her lungs wouldn’t really improve her quality of life a lot – which just makes her more relatable than all the super-vampires around nowadays.

There’s just the right amount of romance, but the book is mostly adventure. I really enjoyed The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Not too serious, but not completely light and fluffy either, I think this book will appeal to a lot of people. It's also refreshing to have a good young adult book not set in America (not that I dislike books that are, it's just nice to have a change of scene). And of course, no vampire book is complete without a werewolf, so keep that in mind!