Catherine Jinks has always had a knack for creating quirky and bizarre characters, and she has done right that with her first attempt at vampire literature. In fact, she has completely rewritten the way people view vampires. Her hero is a Nina, who appears to be just 15, but has been a vampire in Australia for decades. Unfortunately, that means everyone around her, whether her senior citizen mother or the other vamps insist on treating her as a child.

Nina is also not on her own. She has a support group, and not in the more loose definition. It is actually a group of vampires that have come together with the hope of avoiding the darker side of their existence. They don't want to feed of others and infect them. The support group helps them talk through their urges. In fact, one of the members even breeds guinea pigs they can use as a food source.

All of the vampires suffer from weakness, a look of illness, and a general unpleasant feeling. They are fortunate enough to have the support of Nina's mother and a local priest who work to try and assist them in both survival and their fight to avoid their inner nature to feed. Overall, they are successful in these goals.

All of that changes when the darkest member of the group is found dead ... or at least the remnant ashes are found by his roommate. None of them are sorry to see him go since most of them owe their vampiric existence to him, but it does highlight the concern that a vampire hunters may have set his or her eyes on the support group.

Their only clue is a silver bullet. It proves to be just what they need to set them on a course for adventure that will help connect them not only to the bumbling vampire hunter, but also an underground fight club syndicate run by an unscrupulous father/son team that uses local werewolves as the basis for their betting scheme.

Nina and her group find themselves bringing a teen werewolf of questionable civility in to the group in the hopes of protecting all of their secrets and keep them safe. Unfortunately, things don't go quite as planned.

One of the funny things is that Nina is always complaining that her cohorts treat her like a child, but she is just getting the opportunity to explore romance now, when she is technically in her 50's. She ends up being torn between a new friend who may not be as stable as she needs and an old friend with a crush on her.

I have always found Jinks to have a very sophisticate humor. Her tales are always full of complex plot twists that keep the reader wanting to find out where things will end up. The humor is witty, particularly in light of how most people view vampires as having superhuman strengths and skills. Even Nina has fed this stereotype as she is an author of a very popular series of novels with a vampire heroine. It is very enjoyable to see a different take on the vampire mythos. Neither romance nor horror are the basis for this tale. It is a humorous mystery.