Undead and Unwelcome (Queen Betsy, Book 8)
by MaryJanice Davidson
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Book Summary Information
Author: MaryJanice DavidsonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-06-02
ISBN: 0425227731
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
Book Reviews of Undead and Unwelcome (Queen Betsy, Book 8)
Book Review: Queen Betsy comic vampire story No 8 - arguments with werewolves
Summary: 4 Stars
This comedy vampire thriller is number eight in a series which combines chick lit romantic comedy and vampire thriller - from the viewpoint of the new and particularly incongruous Queen of the Vampires.
Imagine a cross between "Sex and the City" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and you've roughly got the idea.
Judging by the other reviews a lot of readers thought this series is losing its edge: I didn't. Essentially the author milked the comic potential of the original plot dry in the first six books, so she started on a new storyline. I thought this worked quite well, and that this was one of the funniest in the series, though obviously some of those who liked the orignal stories disagree.
In this book the heroine and involuntary Vampire Queen, Betsy Taylor, has some unusually difficult family and relationship problems -
* A sister who is the antichrist, and is rebelling against her parent the devil by trying to be good (but has some lethal ideas about how to do so)
* A husband who is King of the vampires
* A baby half-brother, whose guardian she has been since her father and stepmother died, who may have some unusual characteristics of his own, and
* said stepmother occasionally comes back as a ghost to haunt Betsy, and last but not least, this book also includes ...
* Fifty thousand angry werewolves, to whom Betsy is trying to explain how one of their fellow werewolves got killed in her house ...
The plotlines of the first six books were more or less resolved in number six, "Undead and Uneasy." The seventh, "Undead and Unworthy," kicks off what Mary Janice Davidson calls a new "story arc" - she also says that this will be a trilogy. This book, "Undead and Unwelcome" is the middle book in that trilogy, So the full list of Queen Betsy stories to date is
1) Undead and Unwed
2) Undead and Unemployed
3) Undead and Unappreciated
4) Undead and Unreturnable
5) Undead and Unpopular
6) Undead and Uneasy
7) Undead and Unworthy
8) Undead and Unwelcome
There is also a "Queen Betsy" novella in Davidson's book "Dead over Heels" which is a collection of three paranormal romance stories. In my opinion you will get most out of these books if you read them in order: I would start with "Undead and Unwed" and work on from there.
Most of the "Queen Betsy" books are told in the first person by Betsy Taylor, although some chapters of this one are narrated by her friend Doctor Marc Spengler. The first words of the series are "The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry."
Betsy is a former model and is still a fashion fanatic: at the start of the series, on the morning of her disastrous 30th birthday, she is working as a secretary. Her main interests are designer shoes, designer clothes, and her cat. In quick succession she gets fired, loses her cat, and is killed in a car accident. It is a great surprise to her when she rises again as a most unusual vampire. It is even more of a surprise when, through a sequence of bizarre events, she becomes queen of the vampires.
At the start of this eighth book, Betsy and Sinclair have to convey the body of one of their werewolf friends, who was killed in book seven, to the home of the pack. The werewolves are not happy and there is a serious danger of war between the werewolves and vampires.
Meanwhile, Marc suggests to Betsy's sister Laura an imaginative idea for for how to deal with the hosts of devil-worshippers who keep turning up and asking her for instructions. At first the idea appears to be brilliantly successful, but then Laura takes it much too far ...
Mary Davidson has great fun by mixing up the vampire genre as in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" series and Chick-Lit romantic comedy as in "Sex and the City." This series is way over the top, fairly sexy, and usually very funny.
An interesting comparison with other authors who have written entertaining comedies by combining incongruous genres would be with Marianne Mancusi and Robert Frezza.
In the same way that this book gets plenty of laughs by combining chick lit with Vampires, Frezza write two very funny books which combined Vampires and Science Fiction ("McLendon's Syndrome" and "The VMR Theory") and Mancusi combined chick lit with time travel in "A Connecticut Fashionista at King Arthur's Court" and "A Hoboken Hipster in Sherwood Forest." Anyone who likes this book is likely to enjoy all four of those, and vice versa, if you have read and enjoyed any of those books you will probably like this one.
OK, this is never going to win the Booker Prize or any other great award for classic literature, and it is fairly raunchy, so not suitable for children. However, if you have the right sort of sense of humour, it is good fun. I can recommend "Undead and Unwelcome" and also enjoyed reading the rest of the series.
Summary of Undead and Unwelcome (Queen Betsy, Book 8)
New in the "one of a kind"(Darque Reviews) New York Times bestselling series featuring Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor!Betsy Taylor has problems that only a vampire queen/suburban wife could possibly understand. Such as taking the body of her werewolf friend Antonia-who died in her service-to Cape Cod, where she's not sure if the Wyndham werewolves will welcome her with fangs or friendship. Meanwhile, her posse back in St. Paul is sending frantic e-mails alerting Betsy to her half-sister's increasingly erratic behavior. Looks like the devil's daughter is coming into her own-and raising hell.
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