Susan Griscom, $4.99, ISBN 978-0463928264
Fantasy Romance, 2019

Ah, woo-woo romances. Whether it’s werewolves, dragons, or in this case, vampires, it all boils down to the purported alpha male, along with a band of sequel baits, protecting the heroine from a great danger. The heroine, of course, is sassy and feisty and what not, as a lip service concession to the 21st century, but in the end, she’s still the one that’s the destined mate and damsel in distress all in one.

Of course, there are cosmetic variations. We can’t have people accusing the genre of being complete carbon copies of one another, after all!

So, in Susan Griscom’s Protected by a Vampire, which is of course part of a series, we have vampires that are also rock stars.

Also, because new adult is all the rage, or so I’m told as I generally avoid that cringe-generating corner of the genre to my best ability, this one has alternating points of view between the hero and the heroine.

Gage McAllister, is the oldest vampire in The Lost Boys Rock Band. Yes, that’s the name of the band, and I’m still undecided as to whether this is just a clumsy effort at homage or the Author hoping that I’m a fan of that movie and therefore I can just plug in the images of the vampires in that movie and spare the author of having to do too much description work in this story.

He begins this story by narrating to me a flashback scene from five years ago. Assuming that the author is not breaking the fourth wall here, it suggests to me that this fellow probably spends too much time talking about his own past to himself.

Grumble developed deep in the pit of my gut, stabbing at the walls of my stomach like I’d swallowed a jagged stone. That coupled with the proliferated dizziness swirling in my head from low blood sugar caused me to stop and take a few deep breaths. Hunger pains were a bitch.

What? Should that be “grumble” or “growl”? Can a grumble do that? Also, while “hunger pains” is a term commonly used by many people, the curmudgeon in me that has a medical background can’t resist pointing out that the proper term is “hunger pangs”.

It’s not a good sign when the opening paragraph sends me into a nitpick mode, because that’s an indication that it’s just not grabbing me from the get go.

Don’t get me wrong; I never had problems getting laid. But it seemed like every female I came across lately was pretty much an airhead. They were either strung out on drugs or too into themselves and the clothes they wore, or in this last case, weren’t wearing. Most had nothing to offer other than their bodies and their blood. No great conversation to spark my interest.

Who is he talking to? Is the author breaking the fourth wall? If yes, she’s doing it too discreetly because I’m confused as to why Gage’s first person point of view narration suggests that he’s talking to someone. Is that someone a shrink, or maybe another personality of his?

Also: zzzzzzz. When a guy brags about how women come to him easy, my estimation of his mental age drops to 15 and I can’t help placing him inside that drawer marked “Sad Andrew Tate-wannabe”.

If I wasn’t looking for any kind of lasting relationship, why did I feel so empty? I liked my freedom, but there was something keeping me from enjoying it, something I couldn’t quite place.

Seriously, who is that dude talking to?

“Leave her alone.”

“Who died and made you boss?” The vampire grinned at me, chuckling at his own stupid joke.

I cringe so hard that I near tear a ligament on my side, and we haven’t even moved past the first few pages.

Anyway, he is injured while trying to save that woman, Ace. Okay, that’s a nice subversion of the usual hero-is-perfect trope, so I’d give the author that. Ace helps stitch him up, and then we cut forward to five years later.

Don’t get me wrong, I was attracted to plenty of women. And I’ve had my fair share, but none of them have been someone I wanted to spend quality time with, other than feeding and getting my rocks off. Someone who made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world just to be standing next to them. Someone who made my stomach flutter and my tongue go dry, rendering me unable to speak at the mere thought of them; or someone who made me rock hard like a sex starved teenager whenever her face came to mind.

Oh, shut up! Didn’t he just say this a few pages ago? What is with this humble bragging about getting plenty of women while whining that they are all not good enough for his true love? Is the author aware of how unpleasant this attitude is? He can eff them, but they are not good enough for him because they aren’t somehow nice and pure enough for him? That’s a pretty crappy attitude, actually.

He of course meets Ace again.

Here’s a shocker: Acelynn Baird sounds exactly like Gage in her own chapters. As a result, the entire story is like a voiceover actor trying to take on the two main roles in an animated show, but doesn’t have the range to pull it off and both characters end up sounding exactly like the same person.

Worse, that same person is a terminally sarcastic one, although in this case, the sarcasm is more often misses—as in aiming for the Sun but hitting Uranus instead kind of “miss”—in the form of unbelievably cringe bad jokes and tragically unfunny one-liners. See: “Who died and made you boss?” above, and no, pointing out that it is a stupid “joke” doesn’t make things better. If the author knows that it is an unfunny joke, why keep it in and not, say, swap that out for an actually funny one-liner?

The plot is abysmally unoriginal, and it serves more like filler anyway to pad the pages when the two main characters need a break from the same old, same old.

This whole thing is just so played out, and all the botched attempts at sounding hip and witty only make me feel like I’ve somehow died without knowing it and now I’m stuck in a level of hell where I’m punished by having to read this thing over and over for all eternity.

I guess this thing is a good example that sarcasm and wit don’t always come easy or naturally to every author, and who knows, maybe the author may find a better tone in her future stories that can show off the better side of her writing. It’s just so, so unfortunate that this has to happen and I have to read it to truly understand the torture that is bad comedy.

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