Mari Mancusi

Okay, so technically she can’t because I’m immortal. Well, not yet. See, due to the worst case of mistaken identity with my dark-side-loving twin sister at a Goth club called Club Fang, Magnus, a vampire hottie, went for my innocent neck instead of hers. Now if I don’t reverse it in time, Magnus will be my blood mate forever and I’m doomed to be a blood-gulping, pasty, daylight-hating vampire. Believe me, it seriously bites. After the unfortunate slaying of the vampire leader, it’s up to me, my sister, and Magnus to find the one thing that can solve my problem—the Holy Grail. No joke. I seriously hope I can get out of this in time, because somehow, I scored the hottest prom date in my school, the mouth-watering Jake Wilder. And I do not want to be a vampire for the prom—let alone the rest of eternity...

Boys that Bite

Marianne Mancusi

Bitten by a vampire after being mistaken for her Goth twin sister, Rayne, sixteen-year-old Sunny is in a race against time as she tries to prevent herself from becoming a vampire permanently.

Boys that bite

Monicap

“Are you guys…?” I trail off, not quite sure of the PC terminology. Would a vampire be considered mortally challenged?


Boys that Bite is a fun, satirical take on the vampire media that had been saturating pop culture for about a decade at the time of its publication. It was fun, refreshing romp for someone overtired by the over-serious and angsty offerings the last decade of vampire media.

Sunny is a preppy teenager, on the hockey team and in the drama club, while her twin sister, Rayne, is a goth vampire-wannabe. The story kicks off when Sunny is accidently bitten by a vampire in Rayne’s place, and has seven days to find a way to stop from becoming a vampire for eternity.

This story is a romance. There’s no getting around it. Over the course of the book Sunny gradually grows closer to Magnus, the vampire who bit her, as he helps her in finding a way to prevent her oncoming vampirism. Sunny is at first attracted to him, then put off by him when she finds out he’s a vampire, and then grows to care for him based his chivalric nature (he used to be a Knight of the Round Table) on how his well-timed countering of her assumptions:


  Besides, let’s be frank here. Magnus is a royal pain in the butt. Annoying. Self-serving. The kind of guy who thinks only of himself and doesn’t care about the needs of others. 
“You look cold. Here, take my coat.” Magnus says, pulling his leather jacket off and handing it to me. I reluctantly shrug it on.
“Don’t worry, Sunny,” he says, putting an arm around my shoulders and pulling me close to him. I grudgingly fold into his way-too-comfortable embrace. “I promise to find a way to turn you back. No matter way it takes.”
Whoa. He’s not making this easy for me, is he? 
 

All that, and of course, his hot bod. Throughout the novel, Sunny is constantly thinking about sex. It’s not explicit, but she very concerned about the fact that she’s a virgin, what that says about her, and how others perceive her for it. She’s also consistently occupied with the aesthetics of the male characters and spends a not-insignificant portion of the word count daydreaming about or idolizing on the attractiveness of her two love interests. And yet, she also thinks negatively of her twin sister, Rayne, for having lost her virginity. Sunny ends up sitting strangely between prudish and sex-obsessed.

This novel mashes its own vampire lore with that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, asserting the slayer mythology of the latter is literally true. The main characters are accosted by “Bertha the Vampire Slayer” at one point in the novel, and Magnus alludes to “that sympathizer Joss Whedon” creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer as propaganda of sorts. Its self-aware, charming and funny, though may come off as a little fan-fiction-esque to some.

One thing the novel glances over and never quite addresses is the reasons for which Sunny objects to becoming a vampire. Rayne, Magnus and other characters clearly list the benefits to becoming a vampire: 


  Rayne rolls her eyes, as if to imply I’m the stupidest person on the planet. “Are you kidding me?” she asks incredulously. “Why would I want immortal life? Why would I want riches beyond my wildest imagination? Why would I want ultimate power over mere mortals? You should be asking why anyone on earth wouldn’t want to be a vampire.”


Especially since vampire society in this book is constructed in such a way that vampires can survive without taking human life, Sunny’s objection can’t be taken for granted and is never clearly articulated. She makes comments about wanting to “go to college, get married, have a life,” and about missing the sun. Perhaps her contention is that vampirism is at odds with her carefree, preppy lifestyle, but the problem is that the reader never gets a clear sense of what her lifestyle is or why she enjoys it. We’re told she’s a hockey player, but she never once plays it or reflects upon it in the book. Her drama club membership plays a larger roll in the book, but only because Sunny’s second love-interest is playing the leading roll in the play, and the sense the reader is left with is that she’s only part of the drama club to be in proximity to him. She even admits that since she’s an understudy, she attends mostly to drool over him and has stage fright, so god forbid if she had to perform!

The most salient objection she could have had was that it was against her will, but she never makes this accusation. In an explosive scene towards the end of the book, she alleges that Rayne is invested in her transformation as a way for Rayne to have an “in” with vampire society, but this isn’t set up through the narrative. I think the reader is meant to take this moment as an overreaction on Sunny’s part, but it’s a baseless accusation as well and Sunny’s left with no ground to stand on. But perhaps Sunny’s objection to becoming a vampire is just that—baseless. And maybe that’s fine:


  “I want to be human. I want to have a normal life. I want to go to the prom with Jake Wilder and have a great time with him! I want to dance the night away like a regular high school student and forget this whole mess ever happened.”


(view spoiler)[It is baseless, also, because as soon as Sunny realizes that her desire for Magnus outweighs her desire for humanity, she casts all her objections aside. (hide spoiler)]
 
Overall, this is a short, fun book. If you have been steeped in vampire media for the better part of the last two decades and are in the mood for an irreverent and satirical take on the genre, I’d recommend this. Otherwise, it’s a pretty niche book and probably wouldn’t please anyone else.

Briar's Reviews

** spoiler alert **
           Book Title: Boys that Bite (Blood Coven Vampire #1)
Book Author: Mari Mancusi

Introduction: I read this book WAAAAAAAAY back when (like, way back when I was probably in early high school way back) and I absolutely loved it back then. I remember reading this book on the way to a swim meet on a bus filled with athletes who didn't want to talk to me (I was a minor niner who was a great swimmer so I got to go with the grade twelves who were also great swimmers to a meet) so I decided to let my inner book worm come out. Long story short, I read four books of the series there, and was incredibly upset that I left the rest of the series at home. 

So, Mari Mancusi rebooted the book from my understanding so of course I wanted to reread it. Out of all the vampire books I obsessed over in my high school years, Mari Mancusi's Blood Coven Vampires was one of my favourite (Alongside Vladimir Todd and Vampire Kisses) so I wanted to get my hands on a copy! And guess what happened? I wiggled my way into a group that reads this very series so I got a copy sent to me!

My review is simply a review - it was not requested to be nice, it was simply provide a review and we'll continue throwing this series at you. So how could I argue? I loved this series and I had been meaning to pick it back up as some point anyways! It's my guilty pleasure!

Now off to the super spoiler-y review...

Review:
Rayne and Sunny are adorable. While the names are a tad silly (has anyone actually named their children like this? Please, leave me a link for proof. Maybe I live in too small of a town to see this being common), they are fantastic characters. Re-reading the series makes me wonder why having their names Rayne and Sunny was so important - was it for dramatic effect? Was it to show they are opposites? Was it just for comedy?

When Magnus appears, it still makes my heart pound. He was one of my book crushes, and I still adore him. How can you not? He's super hot and a great ying to our Sunny's yang. He's introduced as dark and sexy, which is how you want a YA/teen heart throb to be introduced. Mari does an incredible job expanding on his character -he's not just tall, dark, handsome and brooding. Slowly over the course of this series she delves deeper into this. Now as an adult, I really appreciate that. As a teenie bopper, YA-teenage addict back in the day, I wasn't as appreciative of the hard work she put in.

Bonus Marks: Shout out to Emma Stone!!

Cheesey factor aside, I really did enjoy the entire Sunny accidentally stepping in for Rayne portion of this novel. It's early on, and you can see it coming if you love your soap operas (like I do...), but it's still a great way to get this series started. It starts the series off with a bang and makes the entire potential plot flip upside down. What do you do if you accidentally step in and become a vampire instead of your sister? It's a great start! I still enjoy it, despite the slight cheesiness that goes along with it.

Mari is also the queen of vampire comedy. Random comments fly left and right (sarcastically, insultingly, and many other forms of comedy) and it makes this book better. Does it make it cheesey? Probably. Is this supposed to be a Shakespearean YA novel? Nope!! So it fits in perfectly! This book has a splash of comedy in it! That's one of the great aspects of it!

Bonus Marks: "Vamps-R-Us.com" and the Batman reference. Mari knows the way to my heart...

Overall, this book still holds up for me. When I was a teenager it was a lot "cooler" - the tone definitely fits a YA audience. Since I'm an adult now, I really do enjoy it. It's funny, slightly cheesey, and has the perfect amounts of romance, drama and comedy to make a really great book. 

This book won't be for everyone, but as a throwback for me it's excellent. I definitely suggest this book to those who like the YA genre, who want just a splash of cheesey, soap opera-y drama or who want to read a different take on the vampire genre. 

Forewarning: This book sounds like it's written by a teenager (isn't that kind of the point? The narrators are sixteen years old?). I have seen many, many, many, many complaints about this but you need to understand: THE NARRATORS ARE SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. If you have a problem with that, you need to see that this book is a YA novel. It's not a steamy, EL James Fifty Shades of Grey or Shakespearean novel. It's a YA vampire novel. That is all.

Five out of five stars!

Lovisa

Jessica Nottingham

From the very first page, this book is pure enjoyment in the form of words! This is the type of book that doesn't try to take itself too seriously, and no I don't mean that it isn't written well. What I mean is that the blindingly obvious pun will jump off the page at you and all you can do is crack up laughing. Any book that makes references to Buffy, Angel and the whole Whedon crew automatically wins points with me! I don't want to ruin it by referencing it exactly, but let's just say that there is a Buffy reference in here that had me rolling with laughter! The jokes, the acerbic wit, all of it just made me fall completely in love with this book.

Now on to the characters. Those of you who read my reviews often know that I have to love my characters. If I'm to enjoy a book, they need to be interesting and fun! Enter Sunny and Rayne, the identical twins. They may be identical in appearance, but in personality they are total opposites. Sunny is the sporty, school-driven twin who is trying to get on the radar of the resident "Sex God". Rayne, on the other hand, is a goth at heart who has an affinity for the vampire kind. It was this yin and yang between them that allowed me to connect with both of them equally. They completed one another in the best way possible. There was such fantastic chemistry between them, and the witty banter was amazing!

Remember how I said that this book doesn't take itself too seriously? Well that means that you, my dear readers, shouldn't go into it without the proper mindset. Let me explain. Sunny is a teenager. Sunny does not want to be a vampire, especially not right before prom. Sunny deals with this issue like any typical teen would, with massive amounts of snide remarks and observations. So yes, it's true, sometimes Sunny can be a little obnoxious in the way she speaks and acts. However, keep in mind my friends, this is a satirical type of book. Think Buffy! It's meant to be taken with a grain of salt and big heaping helping of humor!

Can I be honest? I loved this book. Every single minute of it. Sure, there were times when I thought the "teen speak" might have seemed a little heavy, but I've read books (that I won't mention the name of) where this issue completely turned me off of reading the book and the rest of the series. Sunny's way of thinking and talking didn't take away from my enjoyment of the story at all. This is coming from vampire novel skeptic of the highest caliber. Trust me, it means a lot. Don't go into Boys That Bite expecting anything less than a fun and light read! If you're not smiling at least a little at the end of this book, you're either a robot or an alien. Both of which, I might add, are not nearly as cool as a vampire.

Book two here I come!