Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

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

Series: Jessica - book 1

Author: Beth Fantaskey

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Paranormal

Number of Pages: 351

Publisher: Harcourt

Publication Date: 2009

Summary: The undead can really screw up your senior year...

Marrying a vampire definitely doesn't fit into Jessica Packwood's senior year 'get-a-life' plan. But then a bizarre (and incrediably 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 fiance. Armed with new found 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' soul from eternal destruction.

The look of this book and it's description give off quite a cheesy feel, or at least that's the impression I got. In fact that is what I was hoping for when I picked this book up. Something that was a quick read and didn't require too much thought. Instead I got a book that wrote about the most normal and natural sounding vampires' I have ever read. Never in all the many books I have read about vampires have I read a book that didn't feel like they were cliched, forced or just plain ridiculous, even if it was only slightly. Instead the vampires in this book were every day people who just so happen to be vampires. I was quickly sucked into a flawless creation of vampires and wasn't spat out until I reached the end. Yup I read this book in one sitting...okay I stopped to grab snacks.

To me what made this book so well done was the unfolding of events. We start off by meeting Jess, who we believe to be an ordinary teenage girl. Soon, however, Jess finds outs she is anything but ordinary and that she has been betrothed to Lucius since she was a baby as a way of uniting two warring vampire families. Jess is a logical character that believes in what she can see and that science can explain. Because of this we aren't forced into the world of vampires, in fact the word 'vampire' almost doesn't appear at all for the first quarter of the book except for when Jess tells Lucius he must be crazy for believing he is undead and so is she.

From here Jess is slowly forced to accept that she is a vampire and so is Lucius but it is a gradual process. The change that we begin to see in Jess separates her from her everyone and as a character we get to see her grow, trust her instinct and fight for what she wants. Because the closer Jess comes to accepting that she is a vampire, the more Lucius wants to be an everyday teenager. Both characters face some tough questions to do with their identity and who they really are. And for the rest of the book we watch as they try and balance what they want with duty and what is necessary to keep each other safe.

The fight that Jess and Lucius have with trying to save themselves and each other actually gets quite dark, especially for Lucius. When Lucius fights for the freedom he had come to enjoy in his time in America, we are introduced to the Elders and more importantly to Vasile, Lucius' uncle. Vasile as a character is detrimental to who Lucius becomes at the end of the book and the person he will always fight to be. Vasile is cruel, unforgiving and believes in harsh discipline and Lucius faces the hard decision of whether or not his uncle is really on his side.

But the plot and character development aren't the only well done things in this book. The writing style itself was a perfect balance of descriptive and getting to the point. At no point did anything drag or go to fast. It was flawlessly written.

The only thing that prevents me from giving this book 5 stars is the fact that I'm a little bored with unassuming characters finding out that they are really someone special. Seriously, that's it.