For the majority of the book, I felt like I was dragging the protagonist forward with every page turn instead of being led into a puzzling wonder. It's inconceivable that it would take a whole year to get to where it was going.Īnother terrible characteristic of Brewer's writing is that she constantly makes her protagonist dumber than her audience. Arched across all of that is a plot line that should have taken place within 3 weeks tops. It starts at a Halloween skips to the winter Snow Ball dance then to Valentine's day, and the end of the school year. Brewer skips forward in time by hours, weeks, and months without any acknowledgment to the reader. The plot and build of the story was rather threadbare and lacking. And then, of course, she just had to throw in that the street that the vampire family lived on was Lugosi Trail (the only street name, or spacial reference in the whole book).

I'm sure Heather Brewer thought she was pretty damn clever when she named her main vampire character Vladimir (as in 'The Impaler') or when she named another (pretty much non-existent) character Edgar Poe or when she named the big, scary, dressed-all-in-black, bad guy D'Ablo.

Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer