Vamps (Vamps Series #1) »

When the sun goes down, New York's true elite all head to one place: Bathory Academy, where the young ladies of the finest vampire families are trained in shapeshifting and luring their prey.

Bathory's reigning queen, Lilith Todd, is the daughter of a powerful vampire businessman, and she knows exactly what she wants from life. She wants to look beautiful for eternity and party till the sun comes up with her gorgeous boyfriend, Jules. And she doesn't want any New Blood upstarts standing in her way.

Enter Cally Monture, an unexpected threat from a trash zip code. When their first meeting leads to tragic results, Lilith is hungry for revenge.

Children's Literature

Take any formulaic teen novel, transform your characters into vampires, throw in some Gossip Girl sensibilities (seven designer mentions in the first 10 pages) and voila, you get Vamps. The story begins with 16-year-old rich girl Lilith, queen of the local teen vampire set. She sleeps by day and attends her swanky all-girl vampire school by night. Her betrothed, the ultra-gorgeous Jules, attends the local all-boy vampire academy. Lilith's brand-name existence is running along as planned until the entrance of Cally, vampire from a lesser zip code. When Cally becomes involved in the death of Lilith's best friend, Lilith vows revenge on the newcomer. This is the first of what will be a series about the teens, and it is a fluff read at best. The characters are shallow and stereotypical, with little to distinguish them from one other. While Lilith and friends are still under age, the book opens with Lilith working her way into a club, where she and her friends dangle the opportunity for group sex to a "clot" whose blood they want to imbibe. At best this book is a quick read for the vampire obsessed crowd, but not an essential purchase for any library. Reviewer: Sharon Oliver