Review: Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (Mar 23 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061779725
ISBN-13: 978-0061779725

While some young lovers were born to run, Jody and Tommy were born to bite. Well, reborn, that is, now that they're vampires. Good thing theirs is an undying love since their Goth Gal Friday, Abby Normal, imprisoned them in a bronze statue in her living room.

Abby still wants to be a bloodsucking fiend, but right now she's really busy trying to break in a pair of red vinyl thigh-high Skankenstein platform boots and wrangle her manga-love monkey Foo Dog (a.k.a. Steve the bio-chem Ph.D. candidate). And then there's Chet, the shaved vampire cat (and his recently turned meowing minions) stalking the streets of San Francisco. Abby thought she and Steve could stop the ravenous pussycat, oh mais non, they need Jody and Tommy.

Chet, it seems, has a weird reaction to vampirism. He's getting bigger and smarter, and starting to think and act human. Just as Tommy, Jody, Abby, and Steve, along with the turkey-bowling Safeway crew, the Emperor of San Francisco and his trusty dogs Lazarus and Bummer, Abby's gay goth friend Jared, and Tommy's nemeses, SF's finest Cavuto and Rivera, get locked and loaded to hunt big cat, three very old vampires show up--and suddenly everyone's fair game.

This is my second foray into the weird, quirky world of Christopher Moore. And being true to my way of doing things, I have read the third book in a trilogy first, lol. Fortunately, Bite Me starts off with a complete but whacky review of the previous two books, Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You Suck: A Love Story. My head was beginning to spin from all the information being thrown at me, from blue hookers and vamps encased in bronze to the weird interrelationships between the characters (who loved who, etc.) But, what Chris Moore has going for him is the off the wall humour mixed in to keep it interesting; you don't care that you may have missed something along the way (mostly, for me, because I know I'll be reading those other books at some point.)

There were also so many POV's in this story, including Chet, the vampire cat. It felt chaotic at times, but the story moved along despite the frequent change in speaker. The constant was Abby aka Allison, aka Countess Abigail von Normal, Emergency Back-up Countess, etc, etc. She's a hoot, causing havoc wherever she goes and making much larger police detectives almost go running, screaming, from her. My biggest issue with Abby, though, was her continuous use of the word "'Kayso"; I found I was craving nachos and cheese while reading the story....get it? Queso = 'Kayso?...Ok, moving on, lol. What Moore does to poor (I use the term loosely) Abby, her "dark secret", is cruel but oh so funny.

 Moore's writing confirms my long-standing opinion, that the funniest of people are (almost) always the smartest. He paraphrases classic literatures beautifully (and comically), all while embodying the persona of an annoying seventeen year old girl with a smart mouth and penchant for chaos. (The other characters are pretty good too. I would be interested in seeing more of "Foo Dog") I still <3 Christopher Moore, Bite Me totally confirmed it!