3.5
Vampire Weekend
ByPublisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood
“A love letter to the power of music, this thoughtful, humorous exploration of what constitutes living versus mere survival sees Chen (Light Years from Home) at the top of his game.” —Publishers Weekly starred review
"A strong emotional core carries Chen’s (Light Years from Home, 2022) latest, which is ultimately about healing from old wounds and learning how to embrace life again after loss—even if you’re dead." —Booklist
Being a vampire is far from glamorous…but it can be pretty punk rock.
Everything you’ve heard about vampires is a lie. They can’t fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it’s also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.
At least she’s gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her…situation under wraps), maybe she’ll finally feel like she belongs, too.
Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it’s Ian’s love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection.
But as Ian uncovers Louise’s true identity, things get dangerous—especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor. One that goes beyond just family…one that might just change everything vampires know about life and death forever.
“A love letter to the power of music, this thoughtful, humorous exploration of what constitutes living versus mere survival sees Chen (Light Years from Home) at the top of his game.” —Publishers Weekly starred review
"A strong emotional core carries Chen’s (Light Years from Home, 2022) latest, which is ultimately about healing from old wounds and learning how to embrace life again after loss—even if you’re dead." —Booklist
Being a vampire is far from glamorous…but it can be pretty punk rock.
Everything you’ve heard about vampires is a lie. They can’t fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it’s also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.
At least she’s gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her…situation under wraps), maybe she’ll finally feel like she belongs, too.
Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it’s Ian’s love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection.
But as Ian uncovers Louise’s true identity, things get dangerous—especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor. One that goes beyond just family…one that might just change everything vampires know about life and death forever.
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesVampire Weekend Reviews
3.5
“It’s a perfect balance of a kind of traditional vampire story also the story intragenerational family story. And a lot of talk about music, which I’m not not a musical fan so I won’t be able to tell you like yeah that makes sense or the writing is perfectly makes sense about a musician, but it felt like the author did research so they thanked it well enough that it sounds like they understand what they’re writing.”
“I really liked this book!! I thought Louise was super cool, with all her guitars, and playing in bands, and always going to concerts, and of course being a vampire too, duh! Louise letting Ian stay at her house for a weekend so he could put pause on all his worrying about his mom and if she will survive was really punk rock of her (get it?) Ian turned out to be a pretty good kid too, apart from the stealing Louise phone to go track down vampires to save his mom, and almost getting attacked part! And that ending was soooo unexpected for me! I never would have thought Eric would kill other vampires, especially some of the most powerful ones at that! I was skeptical about him the whole book basically up until those ending scenes where he showed he wasn’t evil though. It was cool to realize why Louise started some chapters saying “Vampire Power Myth #” since it was part of the guide book she was writing Ian’s mom for when she left to go back to San Francisco after Ian’s mom was successfully turned into a vampire. I think rereading the book would be cool knowing that small detail about the book. Overall I really liked this standalone book, I kinda wish we had a second one to go with it even!”“I wanted to like Vampire Weekend more than I did. Vampires and music are totally in my wheelhouse. But whatever reason, I just couldn't connect to the story of punk rocker Louise.”
“As someone who’s used to reading vampire books rooted more in urban fantasy than contemporary, the vampire world building felt a little lacking to me but after a while, I realized that was sort of the point. Vampires, at least in Chen’s world, aren’t any more interesting than humans other than they drink blood and have a nocturnal schedule. Louise pretty much states that plainly throughout the book, especially toward the end. One thing I really liked was Ian’s arc. It’s bad enough being a teenager when your parents are alive, but to have one parent die and another in the process of dying is really rough and I thought Chen portrayed Ian’s emotional handling and processing of that quite beautifully.
I struggled, at first, to connect or related with Louise. I don’t particularly have a variety of taste in music. Funnily enough, I listen to mostly stuff from the 60s, but I only know a few trendy/mainstream punk bands and have never really connected with music like some people do. However, I can empathize or understand just how music can shape us and affect our lives, but felt that this really limited Louise as a character since that ended up being her entire make-up/personality outside of merely surviving as a vampire. I think Eric put it to her best toward the end that if she didn’t just have to survive, what would she do with her eternal life? In that regard, I kind of had this simultaneous feeling that she’d grown a lot yet not enough in the book.
This might be just me, but I felt that Chen could’ve leaned a little more into some of the humor displayed by various characters. While some characters, like Ian, Louise, and Eric, had some oomph and personality to them, they still kind of bordered on being flat. This didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book, but the setting just had this small sense of meh and flatness to it that made the pacing a little on the slow side for me, particularly at the end during the vampire meeting and subsequent events that happened afterward. All that felt a little rushed to me as Chen was quickly wrapping up the book.
Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend but this is definitely not in my Must Re-read Pile.”
About Mike Chen
Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, Light Years From Home, and other novels. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, Tor.com, and StarTrek.com, and in a different life, covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mikechenwriter
Other books by Mike Chen
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
