This week I’m sharing a series I found when I was doing my PhD and in desperate need of some light and fun reads. The Undead series was probably the first urban fantasy I had read, but don’t hold me to that statement. I think there are quite a few more volumes to this series than I have, but I stumbled across the first four books in a remainder bin, and was thrilled to try something new at just $3 a book.

Betsy’s 30th birthday didn’t go well. She was fired and fatally hit by a vehicle. Lucky for Betsy, she woke up, albeit a few days after her funeral and dressed in polyester and ugly shoes. The fact that her step mother had dressed her in what she wouldn’t be caught dead in (alas, she was) and stolen her collection of designer shoes appeared to distress her more than the fact that she had died. Betsy’s step mother is not thrilled to see that Betsy is no longer dead, but her best friend Jess is thrilled and helps her to slide back into her life as if she hadn’t died. Albeit with the need to sleep all day, being unable to eat solid food, and having an unending thirst.

Betsy’s rise triggers a bustle of interest from the Vampire community as she didn’t get turned. She can also control her thirst, and therefore isn’t a ravening beast that most newly risen Vampires are. But Betsy’s rise was foretold, and she isn’t all that thrilled to find out she fulfils the Vampire prophecy of their long awaited Queen. She’s not interested in hanging out with the weirdos or wanting to have anything to do with their politics, but she isn’t given a choice. She’s also not who the Vampires would have chosen as their Queen either.

Thus follows the quirkiest take on Vampires that I have ever come across. It is not a series to be taken seriously – go in to have some fun and a laugh.