Book Review: My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine

Amelia Collins is happy, successful and, much to her parents’ distress, completely single. Tired of her family’s constant questions about her non-existent dating life, Amelia decides to get everyone off her back when yet another family wedding invitation arrives by finding someone – anyone, really – to pose as her boyfriend until the wedding is over. Enter Reginald Cleaves, the handsome stranger and, unbeknownst to Amelia, centuries-old vampire she keeps accidentally running into.

Reggie is both charming and more than a little eccentric, so Amelia decides that he’s the perfect choice to be her temporary fake boyfriend and Reggie is happy to agree – especially since posing as her plus-one sounds like the best idea of fun he’s heard in centuries. Plus, with a secret collective of vampires determined to hunt Reggie down and ensure he faces justice for a fire that he may or may not have started over a hundred years earlier, becoming Amelia’s fake boyfriend offers him ever more opportunities to avoid detection and help his ruse of pretending to be human.

As their fake relationship begins, however, real feelings start to grow on both sides and it soon becomes clear that there is more to Reggie than Amelia first thought. And as more of Reggie’s secrets come to light, now it even seems like true love could be at stake.

Good night Amelia,” he said, his voice smooth as silk. He was still holding my hand. He didn’t seem inclined to let it go, even though he’d just said he needed to leave. “I look forward to faking it with you.”

My Vampire Plus-One is a very quick and kooky read, which of course makes it a whole lot of fun all the way through. It’s a novel that focuses greatly on its characters first and foremost and, thankfully, Amelia and Reggie are great characters to spend time with. If you’ve read Levine’s debut My Roommate is a Vampire, you’ll have already met Reggie before; in the first novel, Reggie was Frederick’s guide to the modern world, but here he’s rounded out into an eccentric, cinnamon roll of a character who’s funny, loyal, falls first and falls hard. The addition of a dual point of view really elevates this book too, and even if the actual chapters featuring Reggie’s narration are fewer and further between than perhaps was expected, at least we have his bullet journal extracts to give readers added insight into how his feelings are developing.

Amelia, on the other hand, feels a little more one note, defined largely by her job and her single status. She’s clever, resourceful and very sweet all around, but she doesn’t leave a big impression, particularly when compared to Reginald’s vibrancy. It doesn’t help, either, that nearly half of this novel is spent playing off an initial misunderstanding and, while this allows for some funny moments, it ultimately does Amelia’s character a disservice by delaying any chance of further character development until the book’s second half. Still, together, Amelia and Reggie make for a very entertaining couple, and I loved Reggie’s genuine interest and admiration for Amelia and her chosen career. Amelia’s passion, too, is wonderful to see, and it’s especially gratifying to see her confidence and ingenuity grow to play a key role in the plot too.

While My Vampire Plus-One dedicates a lot of time to building up the relationship between the main characters, it does so at the expense of introducing any major plot developments. This novel features a very fun, engaging narrative and it makes reading it a breeze, but beyond the progression of the fake relationship and Amelia and Reggie continuing to get to know one another, there are very few plot points to push the story onwards. Even the final, big complication within this story is wrapped up very quickly and easily within a couple chapters of the problem coming to light. While this may not be too much of a surprise to anyone who read My Roommate is a Vampire, it does mean that the ending feels rushed and abrupt, and it definitely leaves you wanting to know more about what’s next.

The narrative may be a little uneven, but that doesn’t mean that Levine’s latest novel is anything but a cute and spooky romance to welcome in the autumn months. From vampires and bullet journals to all the fun of the fake dating trope and plenty of cameos from characters that we already know and love from book one, this novel lends itself very well to being the kind of funny, lighthearted rom-com that you can dip in and out of with ease, safe in the knowledge that whenever you pick it up again there’s a story that’s sweet, silly and a little bit steamy waiting for you within these pages.

★★★½

My Vampire Plus-One is published by Penguin on 26 September 2024