Review: Drink.Slay.Love by Sarah Beth Durst

Title: Drink.Slay.Love
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Series: (I actually am not sure...I hope so!)
Pages: 385
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Date Published: September 13th 2011
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Paranormal (YA)
Source: Library


Synopsis:

Pearl is a sixteen-year-old vampire... fond of blood, allergic to sunlight, and mostly evil... until the night a sparkly unicorn stabs her through the heart with his horn. Oops. Her family thinks she was attacked by a vampire hunter (because, obviously, unicorns don't exist), and they're shocked she survived. They're even more shocked when Pearl discovers she can now withstand the sun. But they quickly find a way to make use of her new talent. The Vampire King of New England has chosen Pearl's family to host his feast. If Pearl enrolls in high school, she can make lots of human friends and lure them to the King's feast -- as the entrees.The only problem? Pearl's starting to feel the twinges of a conscience. How can she serve up her new friends—especially the cute guy who makes her fangs ache—to be slaughtered? Then again, she's definitely dead if she lets down her family. What's a sunlight-loving vamp to do?

My Review:

I am SO exicited to share Drink.Slay. Love with you guy! Wow...seriously....just wow...Though I love me some vampire books, I must admit that I tend to stick to crowd favorites and known greats of the Vamp/Urban Fantasy Genre. There are so many vampire books out there that you sometimes don't know where to start, or even if any of it is any good. Well...Drink. Slay. Love is FOR SURE a book to read if you like vampires or the paranormal. It's a vampire book that completely breaks away from all other vampire books. It's creative, imaginative, hilarious, witty...and just about anything you could ask for in a book :) Seriously, reading this book made me put Sarah Beth Durst's other two books on the very top of my TBR Pile

Pearl is a great character. I love that she stays true to the more traditional approach to the vampire...at least at first...At the beginning of the book she really doesn't care about what humans think or if she's hurting them when she feeds. She likes to party, get wild, and have some fun with her vamp boyfriend...then everything changes when she gets stabbed by a unicorn. That's right. I said unicorn...Believe me, I was VERY skeptical when I read the unicorn scene...All I could think was "really??? REALLY??" and was about to put the book down before I started. But somehow, Durst manages to create such great scenes and characters so you could suspend your skepticism just enough to get to love the story despite the crazy unicorns. As unbelievable as said unicorns were,even crazier things start to happen to Pearl because of her attack and her world will never be the same. She is a vivid and extremely witty creation and I absolutely love getting the chance to see her change over the story. Plus...with quotes like the one below, how can you not love this chick?

“You’re a teenage boy. I have boobs. What part of the equation is missing?”

In addition to Pearl, almost all of the other characters had tons of depth and fabulousness. Jadrien (Pearl's vampire boyfriend was totally sexy in an ass-hole kind of way. You want her to break up with him...but can't help but admire his freaking awesome vamp fight skills. There is such chemistry between everyone that you feel like you have known them forever and you just want to go catch a movie with them...while wearing a turtleneck so they can't chomp on your neck...Evan was Pearl's other love interest. Saying it like that there seems like a love triangle, but it didn't seem like the same old same old triangle. Instead you get to see the dark side of Pearl's personality in Jadrien and the new and improved consious-having Pearl when she's with Evan..it was really cool to see the different parts of Pearl and all the characters pulling her in different directions. Some of the best character's, in my opinion, were the members of The Family. Basically a cross between the Mafia and Anne Rice's Vampires. 

The Family were super cool...in a terrifying, "my family will most likely eat my heart" kind of way. They use and abuse Pearl, so you want to hate them, but at the same time they are kick ass vampires. They aren't softened up by silly emotions like so many mopey, "woe-is-me "vamps of late. They are unapolagetically evil and they revel in it which I really enjoyed.  And they casually drink blood-infused tea in a surprisingly menacing way...lol...Of course they present a real problem when they use Pearl's new daywalking abilities to start to corall the local human teenagers to being the main course at their big Vampire Hootenanny...but you can't deny that they are the great kind of villians that you love to hate. Also they provided a really cool alternate to Evan's family. Even though Evan's family is cobbled together out of runaways and orphans, there is so much love and 

I give Drink Slay Love 4 Keys! It was a GREAT example of Paranormal YA. And I am pretty sure that it will be the beginning of a cool series. The only reason that I couldn't give it a 5-er was because I thought that the love interest was a little underdeveloped. It was nice that Pearl and her unicorn beau didn't just jump into a relationship, but I could have used a little more swoon-worthyness from the unicorn of my dreams. Also...aside from the occasional feeding, there really isn't too much action until the very end of the book. The ending is absolutely amazing with kick-butt action scenes and total shocker kinds of twists, but up until then you are just kind of bumbling along with Pearl for a few weeks. Still, it was one of the best Vampire books I've read lately and I will definitely grab any sequels as soon as they come out!