Vampire Weekend

By: Mike Chen

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

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.

©2023 Mike Chen (P)2023 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

Good story, could have used a better editor

I like the concept, but the writing style was a little underdeveloped. There were lots of instances of repetition from paragraph to paragraph that wasn't a literary device and should have been spotted by an editor. The story felt a little young for adult fiction, and though it had its touching moments, the novel lacked depth overall.

A vampire tale that is all heart.

Great read about a post-punk vampire coming to terms with their prior existence, while dealing with very human problems (grief, food insecurity, trauma, family estrangement, loneliness), and hopefully carve out a new existence full of meaning - through our connections & our commonalities.

Without giving away too much, I will say this story warmed my cold, black, vampire loving heart. I found it sweet, sad, funny, genuine, and even cathartic at times.
As a now "old goth", who has taken in A LOT of vampire media, I also found the tone funny, "real", and refreshingly irreverent toward the overdone, and often self important vampire mythos, I loved how the main character debunked vampire myths for the reader through out the story. I also think the narrator, Emily Woo Zeller, did a fantastic job reading tthis book.

If you want to read about sexy vampires in patent leather, smirking cooly in techno blaring clubs, or expert martial artist vampires who ride motorcycles to meetup and fight human hybrid vampires with samurai swords, then you may want to pass on this book.

If you want to read about a down to earth, self deprecating vampire that loves music (almost as much as her corgi), that is trying to heal from the past, survive the present, and hopefully build a better future, then I highly recommend this heartfelt book to you.

Fresh and fun

This is a modern-day vampire story. Like all of Mike Chen's novels that I've read, it is fresh and fun.

Louise Chao became a vampire decades ago and since then, music has sustained her lonely existence. She works late nights at the local hospital as a janitor where she finds access to expired blood bags.

When an old relative shows up at her front door with a teenage boy in tow, she is reminded of painful memories of her youth.

The pages pay homage to punk rock, while pop culture references are dropped like sweet memories of my youth.

Unlikable cast off characters

You know that annoying person who thought their music was better, cooler less main stream - well imagine a vampire version that never matured out of their own self importance. There is a potentially good story in here, but these characters are unbearable. The only one that gets a pass is the grieving kid. I started listening to this during a road trip & never finished when the trip was over.

For musicians who love watered down vampires.

I feel this story is for a very, very, very specific audience. For someone who is deeply into music and a feining interest in the supernatural. So not for me.

I don't know too much about music or all the artist mentioned and couldn't bring myself to care. So I stayed for the vampire part only to realize, there really is no 'vampire' part. Not what I would consider a 'real' vampire anyway.

This version of vampirism is watered down to the max. The only thing these vampires could do is drink blood and live a long time. No special powers, no extra strength, no flight, no telepathy or telekinesis, nothing. Oh and to make matters worse, they can't go out in the daytime. SMH.... Honestly what's the point????

I don't know who rated this story before me that it was able to get all the way up to 4 stars. (Maybe musicians and watered down vampires LOL) but this story is nowhere near that level. Personally, I don't even believe its worth a credit.

Another reason why AUDIBLE should allow you to hear 1 or 2 chapters when you 'sample' a story. That or the first 30mins to hour of listening.

I would've already figured out whether or not I was interested if I had that much time to do it.