You Suck

Susan Bennett's sassy reading is a perfect fit for Moore's satirical story and sarcastic dialogue. Nineteen-year-old Tommy has turned into a vampire, and his sexy girlfriend tries to put up with his incompetence and fawning while she's on to more important issues--like fleeing from Elijah, an elder vampire, and dealing with a whole cast of wacky San Francisco personalities. In a fun way, the book addresses the realities of its absurd construct. Take, for example, the slapstick scene in which Tommy goes on his first blood hunt and finds a promising fat cat but has hilarious difficulty keeping the unkempt animal's fur out of his mouth. Bennett reads like a stand-up comic, issuing both straight lines and zingers with perfect timing. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from November 6, 2006
Moore's latest (after 2006's A Dirty Job
) is a cheerfully perverse, gut-busting tale of young vampires in love. Nineteen-year-old Tommy is a bewildered hipster recently relocated to San Francisco from Incontinence, Ind. His sarcastic redhead (and bloodsucking) girlfriend, Jody, brings him into the fold of the undead ("I wanted us to be together," she says). Tommy, understandably, has mixed feelings; vampirism has its perks (you can turn to mist, live forever and the sex is awesome), but sunlight is death and blood hunger makes you do some pretty foul things. Also, the duo is hunted by Elijah, the ancient vampire who "turned" Jody and wants her back, and a band of Safeway stock boys/amateur vampire hunters known as the Animals (with whom pre–dark side Tommy once rolled). With the assistance of their devoted minion, goth girl Abby Normal, whose hilarious diary entries form part of the narrative, Tommy and Jody evade their pursuers, feeding at night and conking out at dawn, all the while learning how vampirism complicates love. Moore writes with the jittery energy of a brilliant, charming class clown, mixing sex and gore and a potty mouth with a goofy-sweet sensibility to deliver laughs on nearly every page.

Starred review from December 1, 2006
A raunchy slapstick comedy of young vampires in love, Moore's sequel to "Bloodsucking Fiends" (1995) features Tommy and Jody trying to make an undeath for themselves after Jody kills her lover/food source, Tommy, and turns him into a vampire. They have a few problemslike finding a new food source (Chet the giant cat might not have been a good idea), recruiting minions to help them when the sun is up, and dealing with a homicidal elder vampire. There is also a blue-skinned mercenary Las Vegas prostitute, the drug-crazed band of stoners with whom Tommy used to work, the Emperor of San Francisco, and a tough-talking but hopelessly romantic and perky Goth girl named Abby Normal who sees the vampire Flood (19-year-old Tommy) as her Dark Master. Moore is in top form, and this reviewer laughed all the way through this page-turner. Enthusiastically recommended for all adult fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/06.]Ken St. Andre, Phoenix P.L.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2006
Moore revives the stars of his last "love story," " Bloodsucking Fiends" (1995)--literally. Redheaded stunner--and vampire--Jody had been sealed in a bronze body cast by her lover C. Thomas Flood. She escaped, though, because Tommy drilled ear holes so she could hear his heartsick regrets. She used her vampire powers to go all misty, drift out of the cast, rematerialize, and "turn" Tommy, who has just waked as a vampire as our story opens. "You bitch, you killed me!" he remonstrates, "You suck!" Of course, and, now, so must he, but not before some "hot monkey love," which greatly reconciles the 19-year-old to his fate. The lovers must go on the lam, however, since they promised the two San Francisco cops hip to them to get out of town immediately. Tommy finds a minion in morbid but perky teenager Abby Normal, who fills the bill handily and writes her doings up in valley-girl-teenybopper-hip-hop slang in her journal, which Moore excerpts throughout. Good thing Abby's so effective, too, since per usual in Moore's dark-fantasy lampoons, a small army is soon in pursuit of Jody and Tommy. Happy endings for pretty much everybody conclude Moore's hilarious mockery of the pursuit of the appetites.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)