Book Review: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey

Title: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

Author: Beth Fantaskey

Series: Jessica #1

Published by: Graphia Books 2010

Length: 384 pages

Warnings: Profanity, sex references 13+

Other facts: Fantaskey has also written Jekel Loves Hyde (review coming one day), and a sequel

Summary from Goodreads: Marrying a vampire definitely doesn’t fit into Jessica Packwood’s senior year “get-a-life” plan. But then a bizarre (and incredibly hot) new exchange student named Lucius Vladescu shows up, claiming that Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by birth—and he’s her long-lost fiancé. Armed with newfound confidence and a copy of Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions, Jessica makes a dramatic transition from average American teenager to glam European vampire princess. But when a devious cheerleader sets her sights on Lucius, Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a global vampire war—and save Lucius’s soul from eternal destruction

Review: This counts as book 2 of Parajunkee's vampire challenge. The book started off brilliantly. Jessica is stalked on the way to school, is told she is a vampire princess and stabs her betrothed, Lucius in the foot with a pitchfork. All this happens in the first 30 pages. So far, so good. It goes dramatically downhill from there. I vaguely liked Jessica, who, to start with at least, is in no way Mary-Sue-ish. But I absolutely hate Lucius. He is rude, arrogant and snobby. For a Romanian vampire prince he has no manners whatsoever, breaking the folk dolls in the room he is staying in because he doesn’t like them. I'm sorry, Mr. Vladescu, but your future parents in law do! By the time we learnt about the abusive uncle, it was too late to feel any sympathy for him.

This ended up escalating into the classic love-story-with-random-things-protagonists-must-overcome. Of course, sometimes this can be fun, especially when at the end it is revealed they all tie up neatly for a satisfying ending or tie up leaving you with a cliff-hanger that makes you want to read the sequel. However, none of said random things seemed to relate even indirectly to the (non-existent) climax. If you removed the side stories about the horse, and the LuciusxBitchGirl (sorry, I forgot her name), and skipped to the end, it would make perfect sense. Good things about this book? Err... Jessica doesn’t seem too bad, actually at some times rather fiesty and likeable, and the descriptions are very detailed. That’s all I can say. And on a side note, the titular guide to dating on the dark side features in about 6 pages.

Overall: I give this strength 1 tea because while the start of it was good, the whole thing is total rubbish. Fans of Twilight will love it though. And yes, that is an insult.