Jane Jones: Worst. Vampire. Ever.-Caissie St. Onge

This book has probably one the catchiest titles I’ve seen in a long time. We’ve all read books and stories and seen movies that involved vampires. They are unnaturally beautiful, graceful, charming and dangerous. Caissie St. Onge seemed to have at some point thought, “Well, what if there was a vampire that was horrible at being a vampire?” Thus, came Jane Jones.

“For Jane Jones, being a vampire is nothing like you read about in books. In fact, it kind of sucks. She’s not beautiful. She’s not rich. She doesn’t ‘sparkle.’ She’s just an average slightly nerdy girl from an ordinary suburban family (who happens to be vampires). Jane’s from the wrong side of the tracks (not to mention stuck in the world’s longest awkward phase), so she doesn’t fit in with the cool vampire kids at school or with the human kids. To top it all off, she’s battling an overprotective mom, a clique of high school mean girls (the kind who really do have fangs), and the most embarrassing allergy in the history of the undead: she’s blood-intolerant. So no one’s more surprised than Jane when for the time in her ‘life’, things start to heat up (as much as they can or a walking corpse anyway) with not one but two boys. Eli’s a geek but cute real-life boy in her history class, and Timothy is a beautiful, brooking bloodsucker who just might hold the key to a possible cure for vampirism. Facing an eternity of high school pressure and fumbling first dates or a mere lifetime together with Timothy, what’s a ninety-something-year-old teen vampire to do?”

What I enjoyed most about this book is that Jane (also known as Josephine pre-vampire) is that St. Onge kept her a teenager, even though she’s ninety years old. It made the book fun to read because I too was once an awkward slightly nerdy teenage girl. And I totally felt this poor fictional girl’s pain. A new school. Mean girls. Cute boys. Crazy teachers.

Jane’s blood allergy is a unique twist in young adult vampire supernatural books. She sort of the anti-vampire I suppose. She can only feed on a rare type of blood called Bombay blood and she only feeds once week from a couple drops on a spoon. For me, this made her seem more like a normal girl. She’s not graceful or gorgeous and totally disconnected from the real world. And I know, she’s a vampire. She’s not suppose to have any connection to the real world. But it’s nice to be able to go “Oh my Jane, I feel your awkwardness completely.” Hell, I’m almost thirty and sometimes feel like I’m still going through some strange awkwardness of a teenager.

There are two plots in the book: The cure for vampirism and some strange stalker like behavior by her American History teacher, Ms. Smithburg. I liked the secondary plot a bit more than the trying to find a cure one, because we got to see Jane actually use some of her vampire glamouring ability. Unfortunately, I felt that this plot was too short. There could have been more depth played into this plot. But the narrator is a forever sixteen year old vampire so I’m willing to forgive. I remember being sixteen and couldn’t keep a straight thought.

Overall, this book was a super enjoyable piece of brain candy and I totally would suggest it for teenagers and adults alike J