Thanks to IFLS intern Raechel Schink for this review!
Durst, Sarah Beth. Drink, Slay, Love. Simon and Schuster, Margaret K. McElderry Books (978-144-242-3732). Ages 14 and up.
If you have any young adult readers who enjoy books about vampires or unicorns–or better yet unicorns who hunt vampires, then Drink Slay Love is the perfect book for them to read! Other readers who will enjoy this book will most likely enjoy witty humor, feisty heroines, and a book that isn’t all that serious.
The main character of the book is a young vampire named Pearl. She is the only true born daughter of Mother and Daddy, the heads of their vampire Family, kind of like a clan or pack. The Family needs to beware of the common enemies of vampires in all the legends out there about them. They will fry to a crisp in the sunlight. They will burn horribly with even a single drop of holy water. Stakes through the heart or beheading will kill them. Garlic and other religious paraphernalia will slow them down quite a bit and annoy them.
One night Pearl pushes her luck by being rebellious and cutting it close to a vampire’s curfew – just before dawn – for a before-bed snack from her favorite boy juice box. As she and the snack are out back of the Dairy Hut, she sees a unicorn, a real life unicorn! As she tries to confront the pretty sparkly horse, as Pearl names it, the unicorn stabs Pearl through the heart. Amazingly instead of ending up dead, she is still alive, even after being left by the front door of the Family’s house! Her family thinks that she has gone crazy as she rants about unicorns being real.
Slowly over the next few days, Pearl changes – mainly, she can stand in the sunlight without being burned to a crisp! Daddy and Mother decide to use her as the Family hunter for a big event. The Family has been given the honor of hosting the Fealty Ceremony which the vampire King only throws once every century to welcome the younger vampires into the vampire court. With this ceremony comes the responsibility of the Family finding enough human snacks to feed the king and his entourage. Thus she is enrolled and attends the local high school to hopefully find entrance into the students’ homes to capture enough humans for the feast. Human experiences and difficulties ensue, all of which leads Pearl to realize that humans are not only meals, but they have the potential to be friends with vampires.
Follow Pearl on her journey through discovering what exactly it means to have a conscience, what it means to really have friends, and to care about the welfare of others. Durst includes a lot of twists, a bit of drama, and a whole lot of humor. There is a high possibility that some Twilight fans may be offended at some of the jokes that are cracked about Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series, yet the jokes are minimal and nonthreatening. Drink Slay Love is a must read for any who find themselves in need of a fast paced, humorous book about the hilarity of unicorns hunting vampires and vampires growing a conscience.