I ordered this book thinking it was for teens, and it turns out to be for adults--although older teens might enjoy it, too. (There are a few racy passages.) Meg Cabot's books are always so cheery, whatever their genre, that I just get a kick out of them. Besides, I wanted to watch Cabot poke fun at Twilight and the current rage for vampire stories, which is what the book summary seemed to promise... And yep, Insatiable is pretty much "Buffy meets Bella," with some mind reading thrown in because why not? [Some spoilers below!]
Meena Harper writes for a daytime soap, and she is appalled when she is assigned to write a vampire storyline. "'Vampires,' Meena said. 'Real original, Metzenbaum.' Shoshona stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder . 'Get over it, Harper. They're everywhere. You can't escape them.'"
Which just might explain why Cabot wrote this book! But Meena doesn't catch on for pages, not until a macho vampire slayer holds her hostage in her apartment, demanding the location of her new boyfriend's pad. That would be the gorgeous Romanian prince Meena thinks is just perfect--until she gets the scoop on his supernatural secret. It turns out Lucien is in New York because he's trying to track down the idiot who's been draining human girls and leaving their corpses around the city, stirring up trouble for the secretive vampire community.
Pretty soon Meena--another of Cabot's feisty heroines--is attracting a lot of vampire attention because of her own secret: when she meets someone, she knows when and how they're going to die. It seems odd to her that she doesn't know this about Lucien (who's already dead); think psychic Sookie Stackhouse and her attraction to seemingly blank-minded vampire Bill.
Of course, as in any Cabot book, we get a lot of humor, most of it clever enough to make readers smile. There's Meena's anxious dog, Jack Bauer, for example, who turns out to be more tuned in to vampires than his owner. Also characters like a vampire slayer with an anger management problem, a geeky boss, and a fondness for high-class hotels. Insatiable is a fairly predictable vampire romance/adventure story, which eventually leads to a love triangle and a big, climactic fight scene. There's definitely room for a sequel here.
You might get a sense, as I did, that the book starts out tongue-in-cheek, but ends up taking itself a little too seriously. After all, it's hard to tell the difference between spoof and non-spoof when the female lead is a super-magnet for every major hunk in sight. Exactly why is someone like Lucien so enthralled by a girl like Meena, who's not the deepest person you'll ever meet? (Eternal soulmates--again!) I realize this goes back to wish fulfillment for the Everywoman reader, but I would have liked to see a bit more richness to Meena's character just the same.
Still, Insatiable is a light romp through vampire territory, a nice beach book for anyone who's up for paranormal romance. Note that Meena, perhaps because she's a little older, does seem to have more common sense than Stephenie Meyer's Bella, at least in Book 1. Who knows what she'll do in Book 2?
