I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump. Nothing seems to have been piquing my interest and I was starting to get worried that I need a break from romance. Sacrilege, I know! So along comes Ms. Harper with her vampire series and I am once again smitten. Wicked-nasty sense of humor, check, awesome comedic relief from side characters- double check, and a cluster “F” of major proportions, triple check, check. Or as Michael from The Office says, win-win-win.

Warning: these books may make you giggle inappropriately, make piggy snorting noises and if you are not careful, make you spew your drink out of your nose. Drink responsibly people!

As my English professor once told me, it’s easier to make people cry than laugh (after he gave me a C-).

 This author has an amazing sense of humor and her dialogues are not only memorable but they have a sense of realism that is refreshingly appealing. It’s not often that a character can pull off not only being an incredible smart-ass but a charming one at that.

Jane Jameson, is your average, mediocre librarian. Nothing exciting happens to her and if she could be anymore plain, she’d match the wall-paint at the DMV.  Take the worst day you’ve had and multiply it by a thousand and that pretty much sums up Jane’s ‘happenstance’ into becoming a vampire. Fired from her librarian job, and given “Shenanigans” gift certificates as a severance, Jane does what any red-blooded American would do after getting the axe. She gets rip-roaring drunk off blue Hurricanes. 

What’s the most embarrassing way to become a vampire? Just ask Jane! After leaving the bar her car breaks down and she decides to hoof it back to her place. The town drunk mistakes her for a deer and she is shot, left dying on the side of the road. Is this really how she is going to die? Mistaken for a freakin deer! Well, you’ll have to read the series in order to find out, just how does Jane get out of this pickle. Add a best friend named Zeb, his werewolf girlfriend and crazy-narcissistic mother and you have an epic tale of comedic proportions that rivals Shakespeare any day. (Well, that might be a bit much, but you get the idea).

I can’t count the ways in which this series tickled me to the point of laughing out loud and having Mr. S-Hot come and investigate. I’ve even recommended this series to my mother who scoffs at all things paranormal. (she’s barely forgiven Nora Roberts for coming out of the closet as J.D Robb.).  If I had to find something to crique (I really have to dig for it) would be that Jane upstages her love interest Gabriel, literllay she and her wacky friends & family steel the show.  I also thought in the last book Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever, the secret Gabriel kept from Jane that almost cost their relationship just did seem “that bad.” 

 Anyway, for anyone looking for a witty paranormal read, Jane Jamison series (or what I refer to as the Nice Girls Don’t series) is not to be missed!

Rating

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs (Bk1)

Genre Paranormal Romance

384 pages

 

Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children’s librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed $25 in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that’s sure to become Half-Moon Hollow legend.  On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer, shot and left for dead.  And thanks to the mysterious stranger she met while chugging neon-colored cocktails, she wakes up with a decidedly unladylike thirst for blood. 

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate.  She has to fake breathing and daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family.  She’s forced to forego her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative.  Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold.  And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What’s a nice undead girl to do?

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men (Bk 2)

Genre Paranormal Romance

400 pages

Life as the undead is finally settling down for Jane Jameson. Her somewhat unhealthy relationship with her sire, Gabriel Nightengale, is slowly coming into focus.  She loves her new job at Specialty Books. Her family, well, her father, is adjusting well to her condition. Her mother believes that if Jane would just try hard enough, she wouldn’t have to be a vampire anymore.

With Zeb’s Titanic-themed nuptials looming on the horizon, Jane is forced to wear a bridesmaid’s dress her body may reject like a faulty organ. And Zeb’s mother seems hell-bent on stopping the wedding if she can’t have Jane for a daughter-in-law.

In other matrimonial shenanigans, the passing of Grandma Ruthie’s fiancé, Bob, puts her back on the market. Ruthie’s new fiancé, Wilbur, smells like old cheese, has his own sordid history of suspiciously dead spouses, and died more than 20 years ago.

With daytime funerals, mother-of-the-groom hijinks, and Styrofoam icebergs to contend with, will Jane survive her best friend’s wedding? 

You will literally die laughing at what Zeb’s mother does to Jane and Zeb. This is probably my favorite book in the series, from the amount of times I laugh out loud.

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever (Bk 3)

Genre Paranormal Romance

336 pages

Nothing sucks the romance out of world travel like a boyfriend who may or may not have broken up with you in a hotel room in Brussels. Jane Jameson’s sexy sire Gabriel has always been unpredictable, but the seductive, anonymous notes that await him at each stop of their international vacation, coupled with his evasive behavior over the past few months, finally push Jane onto the next flight home to Half Moon Hollow—alone, upset, and unsure whether Gabriel just ended their relationship without actually telling her.

Now the children’s-librarian-turned-vampire is reviving with plenty of Faux Type O, some TLC from her colorful friends and family, and her plans for a Brave New Jane. Step One: Get her newly-renovated occult bookstore off the ground. Step Two: Support her best friend, Zeb, and his werewolf bride as they prepare for the impending birth of their baby . . . or litter. Step Three: Figure out who’s been sending her threatening letters, and how her hostile pen pal is tied to Gabriel. Because for this nice girl, surviving a broken heart is suddenly becoming a matter of life and undeath….

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