Schnapps Gives Me Mint Farts

You Suck
A Love Story
by Christopher Moore

Genre; Comedy/Satire
Publisher; HarperCollins Publishing/New York/2007
Pages; 328
ISBN; 978-0-06-0592-29-1

"You bitch, you killed me! You Suck!"

Plot; Tommy and Jody may look like your average young couple, but if you take a closer look at their pale skin and blood spiked coffee it won't be long before you are running for your life.

You Suck is the sequel to Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends and is a satirical take on the current love of vampire fiction.

What would it really be like to be a creature of the night? Would you have the courage to take a human victim? What would it feel like to have fangs?

My Thoughts; This has to be one of the funniest books I have read in a long time, if not ever.

As we all know, vampire fiction is extremely popular at the moment with such series as the Twilight saga, the Blue Bloods novels and the Vampire Diaries. All of these series romanticise the life of a vampire, but Christopher Moore has taken a comical stand.

What is so wonderful about this book is how the young couple deal with becoming vampires. I imagine it is how your everyday person would really deal with the situation; the lisp which comes with the fangs, the desperate want of coffee you can't have, the use of wet wipes to clean the victim's neck before you bite.

There are so many hilarious scenes in this book. The visualisation of Tommy with a fur filled mouth after having tried to drink the blood of the "huge cat" was enough to make me laugh with tears, let alone after they shave the cat and dress it in a red jumper.

One of my favourite characters would have to be Abby, the "dedicated" minion. Any day on the street you can see those faux vampire teens, clad in black, wearing striped stockings and spiked dog collars, and I have often wondered how they would handle it if they were to encounter a real vampire. I wonder if they would take it in their stride as Abby seems to in this book.

What was lacking in this book was continuity. The first half is hilarious, to the point of making your gut ache from laughter, but in the second half it is as though Moore is so focused on the story progression that he leaves the comedy behind. Yes there is still the occassional spark of humour, but it was more sparatic than the page-by-page laughter of the first half. I found this to be a little dissappointing, because I wanted that comic relief to continue.

One more little tiff I have with this book is that I had no idea that it was a sequel until about half way through when I kept encountering characters I hadn't met before. Has anyone else ever had this happen to them? When I found this book, and read the synopsis on the back, I thought, "this sounds like alot fo fun", but nowhere on the cover, in the synopsis or in the leading paragraph does it mention being the sequel to another book. A big "2" on the front may have been a help!

With all this said, I would happily read the next book, Love Bites. If it is as funny as this one, it is guaranteed to be on my list of top comedies.

If you enjoy a book with "bite" you will love this book or, if you hate this current influx of teen vampire fiction, you will love the satire of You Suck.

NB. This book fulfils Challenge 2 in the Take Another Chance Challenge and has also been reviewed over at Find Another Book Here.

Happy Reading!