And yes… there is a thing going on with names in this book. My particular favourites are the eccentric neighbouring couple Mary Lou and Emil and Meena’s clueless brother Jon, as well as Meena’s vampire-hating dog, Jack Baur.

There is also delightful cast of characters around the three main characters, Meena, Lucien and Alaric. She thinks the whole notion of vampires is so lame and ridiculous… Meena is a script writer for a long-running soap that is suffering from falling ratings, so the studio have come up with the idea of introducing a vampire storyline, to Meena’s intense disgust. The vampires are nicely handled – and while there is an undercurrent of fun, particularly at the expense of the lantern-jawed hero Alaric Wulf, chief vampire-slayer of the Palatine Guard, once the action starts, there was plenty of tension and gore. It takes a lot of skill to take the vampire sub-genre and gently parody the more gothic aspects, while at the same time producing a gripping, convincing adventure tale in the same genre. Meena is an entertaining protagonist, who spends a great deal of time trying not to think about death, until she sees how those around her are going to die… And the catch is, those deaths are avoidable, so she feels obliged to try and warn them, which does nothing for her love life.Ĭabot is an experienced writer, clearly at the height of her powers. That’s as much of the rather chatty blurb as I’m willing to share as the plotting in this smart, semi-parody is well paced and crafted to pull you in. Maybe that’s why when she meets Lucien Antonescu – a modern-day prince who also has no destiny that she can foresee – she’s instantly attracted. No one ever does.) But while she’s always been able to see everyone else’s destiny, she’s never been able to look into her own. After all, she knows how you’re going to die. Meena Harper is familiar with the supernatural. Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper. However I’d so enjoyed the chirpy tone of the protagonist Meena Harper that when I was needing some light relief after struggling with a tenacious cold that has turned into something nasty and infected, I dived into Insatiable.

With my customary efficiency and foresight, I managed to read the second book Overbite in this series – see my review here – before plucking this one off my teetering TBR pile.

Meg cabot insatiable series