Review of Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story by Adam Rex

Well, there are only two things I didn’t love about this book, and unfortunately, one of them was the ending.  What a disappointment!  I wanted to say that up front, because if a bad ending makes a book not worth reading for you, you should give this one a miss.  The premise of the book is hilarious: Doug Lee, a fat, unattractive, geeky 15-year-old is attacked and turned into a vampire.  Since he is now undead, he seems to be stuck being a fat vampire forever.  One of my favorite quotes from the book kind of sums it all up –“I think sometimes you think you’re the hero of the story, and sometimes you think you’re the victim…but you’re not either.”  There are some funny scenes where Doug desperately tries to find something he can feed off of without actually having to bite a human.  He mostly makes do with cows, but his best friend Jay (who Doug has confided everything to) tries to help him out by breaking into the zoo with him to find something a bit more, well, cuddly (but not endangered) to bite.  Eventually Doug is approached by  the local vampire group, and as the book progresses, he discovers that if he drinks the blood of humans, his appearance improves.  In fact, he becomes downright good-looking.  However, he sort of loses his nice guy personality, too.  The other thing I didn’t like about the book is that the passage that describes Doug’s attack that turned him into a vampire is very dark and graphic compared to the rest of the book.  The tone of the book is so light and funny that it was quite jarring to read that part, and, to tell the truth, I pretty much skipped over it.  I think the book is still worth reading –I did a fair amount of laughing out loud.  Review by Stacy Church