Scholastic, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-545-20238-1
Parody, 2012
Vlad Mezrich is the pseudonym of what seems like a bunch of contract writers hired by Scholastic to hop onto the parody bandwagon that was a result of that author writing that series. The Vampire Is Just Not That into You is a parody of the sparkling vampire fad, and it plays on the premise that the reader is a Bella Swan-wannabe hoping to snare an Edward Cullen of her own.
The joke here is that all the male vampires portrayed in this book are self-absorbed and borderline insane types, but that’s fine because the young girls who want a vampire boyfriend are just as self-absorbed and vain as those vampires. One darling here is quoted as saying that she doesn’t care whether she will be killed by her vampire boyfriend because at least she’d die popular, heh. Also quite amusing is how those vampires are depicted as crazy types who are attracted to accident-prone ladies who could choke on her own shoe lace, while the young lady’s fiercest competition for the vampire is… ta-da, the new girl in school who seems suspiciously like Bella Swan. Everyone, the vampire and the young lady, is dripping in fake angst for the sake of being cool.
This book is humorous for, oh, forty pages. But after a while, I realize that the above are the only running gags contained in this book, and these gags cannot sustain the length of this book. Soon, the jokes become repetitive.
Still, this book isn’t just a parody. The two short chapters on breaking up with a vampire and moving on with life actually contain some sensible advice for finding someone who loves you for yourself rather than your blood type or how your weaknesses validate his sense of superiority. I don’t know why such advice is sneakily inserted into these chapters, because I doubt any sane reader will actually try to find romance by emulating Bella Swan. But I appreciate the sentiment, though.
The Vampire Is Just Not That into You is a parody that quickly runs out of steam, but I guess it makes a decent novelty gift for anyone who wants to chuckle at the more ridiculous tropes in the sparkly vampire fad. Surely, though, there has to be better parody efforts out there.
