The Radleys by Matt Haig

MILESTONE ALERT! My last post on here was #600!! 600 posts! That's a lot of book rambling by me and Allison. :-) And we are at 192 subscribers when you combine our Google Reader and Blogger stats. Come on! Get us to 200 subscribers! I think a giveaway might be in the works if we d0 get to 200 subscribers.

Okay with that bit of boasting out of the way, let's get to today's regularly scheduled book review. :-)

Matt Haig's The Radleys is yet another entrant into the literary world of vampires. Let me digress for a moment. Why are vampires so popular these days? Seriously. What is the appeal of these bloodsuckers? Is it because they are supposed to be attractive? I admit, I was not one of those people who got sucked into Twilight. I read the first one and did not read anymore. I have watched the movies though just to see where the story went from there. I have not read any of the Sookie Stackhouse books, nor do I really want to. I have not watched True Blood...in fact, I was never even into Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my younger years. BUT, something about the description of The Radleys appealed to me. I think it was the idea that they were trying NOT to be vampires!

The Radleys lived on an ordinary street in an ordinary village in England. Peter was a doctor, Helen was a stay-at-home mom and an artist, and they had a son named Rowan and a daughter named Clara. They always seemed a little pale and the kids seemed a little strange to their high-school classmates. But other than that, just run-of-the-mill people. HA! They were actually abstaining vampires. Vampires, who didn't want to be vampires anymore! And their kids didn't even know they were vampires. Until Clara decides to become a vegan. The lack of red meat in her diet went against part of the Abstainer's diet and an incident at a party one night turns the family's whole world around. Long ignored family members start appearing and secrets are revealed.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. I think I might have liked it to be a bit more campy and lighthearted. The second half was pretty dark. But overall, Haig made a valiant effort in breaking into the vampire genre. This is a perfect book for a long airplane ride, a beach read, or if you happen to be stuck inside for a snow day with three foot drifts in front of your garage like some people in the Midwest today.

Source disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher after sending a request from Shelf Awareness.