Book Review: Slayed

Title: Slayed

 Author: Amanda Marrone

 Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2011

 Format: Print and Ebook

 Genre: Young adult, Paranormal

 

The Van Helsing family has been hunting vampires for over one hundred years, but sixteen-year-old Daphne wishes her parents would take up an occupation that doesn’t involve decapitating vamps for cash. All Daphne wants is to settle down in one place, attend an actual school, and finally find a BFF to go to the mall with. Instead, Daphne has resigned herself to a life of fast food, cheap motels and buying garlic in bulk.

But when the Van Helsings are called to a coastal town in Maine, Daphne’s world is turned upside down. Not only do the Van Helsings find themselves hunting a terrifying new kind of vampire (one without fangs but with a taste for kindergarten cuisine), Daphne meets her first potential BF! The hitch? Her new crush is none other than Tyler Harker, AKA, the son of the rival slayer family.

What’s a teen vampire slayer to do?

I picked this book up at Books A Million when my local store was closing. It was like three dollars and I thought that it would be a fun, quick read. It was a quick read and it had some good points but it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.

I really enjoyed the premise of the book about vampire hunters called to a town that has a vampire problem, but not any vampire problem there was something different about these vamp attacks.

I liked the fact that Daphne’s love interest was not a vampire (like so many hunter – vamp books) but a fellow hunter from a rival family. I also liked Daphne’s new friend – who was spunky and gung ho about hunting vamps. She had some depth to her, deep down, she was a wounded girl by parents who didn’t have any time for her.

Daphne was a character that I liked but I just couldn’t get that involved with her. She was very sheltered surprisingly for being a vampire hunter. She had a kind of “sorry for me” attitude that this was her life and her mother was a cold and unfeeling person. I don’t understand why she didn’t just speak up and tell her parents how she was feeling. She just kind of went along with everything and complained about it internally. Her parents annoyed me acting like they were overprotective but then letting her go off alone to hunt vampires… it didn’t make much sense to me.

I think story line in the book had potential to be better. The plot was weak and I think a good content edit could really have brought the plot front and center and set this book apart from other vampire books. I also think that for a young adult book there were too many references to alcohol and sex. The fact that the book ends with Daphne and Tyler in bed annoyed me as well. I’m certainly not saying that the absence of sex in YA books is necessary, in fact I think that it can be unrealistic because let’s face it teen’s deal with sex and the pressures of it but I think it should be handled in a responsible way. The fact that the book ended the way it did was trying to relay a “happily ever after” scenario but why does happily ever after have to equate with the bedroom? It doesn’t. And also, for a girl that led such a sheltered life and never had any contact with boys at all until meeting Tyler is it really believable that he would be “the one”? Wouldn’t she be wanting to meet more people and really learn about the things she thought she was missing?

Slayed had potential to be a really good vampire hunter book but in my eyes it fell short.

So there you have it. My opinion.