Insatiable by Meg Cabot

I really enjoy going to hear authors speak. I’ve only been to two author talks, but I have liked both, so, yes, I think they are a fun thing to do. It might not be a glass of wine and a good book while everyone in the house is sleeping, but I get to dress up and usually I get to go dinner and, most importantly, I get out of the house. So, when I found out Meg Cabot was speaking, I jumped at the chance to see her.

I liked Meg Cabot immediately. She was energetic and funny, and kind of looked like Tina Fey (she did have short brown hair and glasses, but I also just read Bossypants, so I may just have Tina Fey on my brain). The reason Meg Cabot decided to visit our little city is to promote her newest books Insatiable and its sequel Overbite. Because she told us all about the books and their storylines, and this cute little dog she named Jack Bauer, I had to buy Insatiable. Just a little side note here: Jim did take my credit card away, so when I spent my money on the book all I could think was, “Okay Cabot, this book better be freaking good or you are going to get an angry email from me.” Sixteen dollars is a lot for a girl on a budget.

Now, I have definitely read my fair share of vampire books. I had to read the Twilight series because my friends and students were so into Twilight that I had to see what the buzz was about. I will not tell you what I thought about the books because this is supposed to be a review of Insatiable (if you would like to know, you can ask my fourth hour AP class from last year. I think we talked about the book for an entire hour).  I have also read the Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse books as seen previously on this blog. Naturally, I was a little skeptical of yet another vampire book, let alone a book I bought with my budgeted cash for the week. But, I loved it.

The main character Meena is a type of psychic, but she can only see how and when a person will die. I think most of us would really like a psychic power, but I’m not sure I would enjoy having this particular type of psychic ability, yet this fits the darker tone of this book. She meets a mysterious dark and handsome man and they fall instantly in love, only he’s a vampire. So, there are a lot of similarities between this book and the two previous books. However, Cabot did something different. She weaves in historical facts into her storyline: Back, way before you were born, St. George slayed a dragon, but dragon means Dracul in Romanian and Dracul stands for Dracula and voila, a story is born. Insatiable really is soft core Da Vinci Code for vampires. I actually wanted more vampire conspiracy theories and historical facts thrown in, but this might also be because I’m a huge nerd. Back to the storyline,  Meena’s mysterious dark man is not only a vampire, but he is Dracula’s son, so he is the most wanted vampire of all vampires, Lucien. He is sought after by the Pope’s (yes I did say Pope) own vampire fighting forces, and they will stop at nothing until all vampires are eradicated. The book was entertaining and suspenseful, and even when Ava walked past me with a super stinky poop diaper, I ignored her for a few minutes (go ahead and vote for me as mother of the year). I HAD to finish the book. I will definitely be picking up Overbite from the library… in a few weeks. I’m number eight on the reserve list, so until then, I can reread Insatiable because I own it and even has my name in it signed by Ms. Meg Cabot.