Diary Of A Wimpy Vampire by Tim Collins
Aug. 7th, 2011 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”Chloe smiled at me in maths today, but this made my fangs come out so I couldn’t smile back. If only I could express my true feelings for her. I might write a poem.”
Nigel Mullet is just your average, everyday vampire. Transformed at the awkward age of fifteen, he will remain this age forever, being forced to spend eternity coping with acne, a breaking voice, and ineptitude with girls.
In this, his brilliantly funny diary, Nigel chronicles his increasingly desperate attempts to be noticed by the love of his life, Chloe, the constant mortification caused by his vampire parents (it’s so embarrassing when they try and bite your friends), and how unfair everything feels when you’ve been undead for over eighty years and you’ve never had a girlfriend.
Forced to hang out with the goths and emo kids in an effort to blend in, and constantly battling his confusing desire to sink his fangs into Chloe’s neck, will Nigel ever get his girl?
Nigel Mullet is fifteen years old. Being fifteen is difficult enough, but Nigel’s been fifteen for over eighty years now because he’s a vampire and being a vampire sucks. For starters, he doesn’t have any vampire superpowers – no vampire beauty, no vampire super-strength, no vampire super-speed, and no magical mysterious extra powers. Even his younger sister has super-strength, which she uses to beat him up. Then there’s the fact that his parents are really embarrassing – they insist on wearing old-fashioned clothes, his dad hates and mistrusts computers and they always give him rubbish advice. Plus neither of them ever asked him if he wanted to be a vampire – they just turned him anyway.
But Nigel’s life starts to improve when a pretty new girl called Chloe starts at his school. Chloe’s sensitive and mature and Nigel’s so taken with her that he begins to keep a diary summarising his feelings and attempts to woo her, together with the daily indignities that school usually brings.
Tim Collins’s book is a witty and clever parody of TWILIGHT with a dash of Adrian Mole thrown in.
The diary format works well, with Nigel’s anguish at his daily humiliation being well detailed so that you both feel sorry for him while you’re laughing at what’s happened. I particularly liked his bumbling courtship of Chloe, which has a chaste sweetness to it (he dreams of little more erotic than nibbling on her neck) and which he marks through writing some pretty awful poetry. However there are also some great set one-liners and vivid descriptions – my favourite being his summary of a school visit to the zoo, which goes spectacularly wrong as the animals can’t cope with his vampire status.
The world-building is well realised, particularly the way vampires really live compared to popular misconception. There is a mystery element to the plot, but it’s not particularly well developed and seems to be there only to give the story a climax that I don’t think it needed.
Mention should be made of Andrew Pinder’s brilliant illustrations, which frequently had me giggling as much as the diary entries.
All in all, this is a funny, clever parody that pokes fun at romantic YA fantasy but not in a nasty way. I think there’s plenty in there for teens and adults and I look forward to reading the sequel.
The Verdict:
Tim Collins has written a witty, clever and surprisingly sympathetic parody of YA vampire fiction. Nigel’s excruciating embarrassment at both the daily indignity of being an unvampiric vampire, his longing for Chloe and the bad poetry make for an entertaining read from beginning to end and I look forward to reading the next one.
Nigel Mullet is just your average, everyday vampire. Transformed at the awkward age of fifteen, he will remain this age forever, being forced to spend eternity coping with acne, a breaking voice, and ineptitude with girls.
In this, his brilliantly funny diary, Nigel chronicles his increasingly desperate attempts to be noticed by the love of his life, Chloe, the constant mortification caused by his vampire parents (it’s so embarrassing when they try and bite your friends), and how unfair everything feels when you’ve been undead for over eighty years and you’ve never had a girlfriend.
Forced to hang out with the goths and emo kids in an effort to blend in, and constantly battling his confusing desire to sink his fangs into Chloe’s neck, will Nigel ever get his girl?
Nigel Mullet is fifteen years old. Being fifteen is difficult enough, but Nigel’s been fifteen for over eighty years now because he’s a vampire and being a vampire sucks. For starters, he doesn’t have any vampire superpowers – no vampire beauty, no vampire super-strength, no vampire super-speed, and no magical mysterious extra powers. Even his younger sister has super-strength, which she uses to beat him up. Then there’s the fact that his parents are really embarrassing – they insist on wearing old-fashioned clothes, his dad hates and mistrusts computers and they always give him rubbish advice. Plus neither of them ever asked him if he wanted to be a vampire – they just turned him anyway.
But Nigel’s life starts to improve when a pretty new girl called Chloe starts at his school. Chloe’s sensitive and mature and Nigel’s so taken with her that he begins to keep a diary summarising his feelings and attempts to woo her, together with the daily indignities that school usually brings.
Tim Collins’s book is a witty and clever parody of TWILIGHT with a dash of Adrian Mole thrown in.
The diary format works well, with Nigel’s anguish at his daily humiliation being well detailed so that you both feel sorry for him while you’re laughing at what’s happened. I particularly liked his bumbling courtship of Chloe, which has a chaste sweetness to it (he dreams of little more erotic than nibbling on her neck) and which he marks through writing some pretty awful poetry. However there are also some great set one-liners and vivid descriptions – my favourite being his summary of a school visit to the zoo, which goes spectacularly wrong as the animals can’t cope with his vampire status.
The world-building is well realised, particularly the way vampires really live compared to popular misconception. There is a mystery element to the plot, but it’s not particularly well developed and seems to be there only to give the story a climax that I don’t think it needed.
Mention should be made of Andrew Pinder’s brilliant illustrations, which frequently had me giggling as much as the diary entries.
All in all, this is a funny, clever parody that pokes fun at romantic YA fantasy but not in a nasty way. I think there’s plenty in there for teens and adults and I look forward to reading the sequel.
The Verdict:
Tim Collins has written a witty, clever and surprisingly sympathetic parody of YA vampire fiction. Nigel’s excruciating embarrassment at both the daily indignity of being an unvampiric vampire, his longing for Chloe and the bad poetry make for an entertaining read from beginning to end and I look forward to reading the next one.
