She fancies guys in capes with fake pointy teeth. Rosa’s one of those girls, living girls, with a penchant for the Gothic. If it weren’t for Rosa he might just do himself in. I mean, Dave’s a vampire (can you say “worst job interview ever”?) and his master/boss happens to be Radu, a manager who likes to use terms like “team player” and “culinary instinct”. For even the most vamped out amongst us, Life Sucks offers something fresh and new.ĭave works the night shift at the Last Stop corner mart and his life is going nowhere. Life Sucks takes that old tired vampire idea, places it under ugly fluorescent lights and their dead end jobs and somehow the combination is electric. In fact, as I am writing this review I just attempted to read a page or two to pinpoint why this was and the next thing I knew I was on page fifteen.

Then before I knew it I was reading the entire book, it was 2 a.m., and I couldn’t stop. But that night I made a huge step backwards in my campaign against reading any more vamplit. I wanted to yell, “Booooooooring!” at them and hand the novel to the first graphic novel-inclined soul I met. So when someone at First Second handed me a copy of Life Sucks I was so not interested. Is it fair to say that they’ve been “done”? From the Twilight series to Buffy to whatever vampire-related dreck we see next you sometimes just wanna grab the creators and say, “ALL RIGHT! FINE! I GET IT! IT’S A METAPHOR! CAN WE MOVE ON ALREADY?” I think we’re finally reaching that phase where people start looking beyond vampire for their supernatural thrills (Zombies: This year’s vampires) and in my own personal life I was prepared to never ever read another frickin’ vampire novel again.

But YA good graphic novels get a pass.Ī person could be forgiven for getting tired of vampires. Review in 29th January 2008 School Library Journal Blog

Life sucks by jessica abel