Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson

From Just-Laid-Off Secretary to Queen of the Undead… 

It's been a helluva week for Betsy Taylor. First, she loses her job. Then, to top things off, she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites (besides waking up in the morgue dressed in a pink suit and cheap shoes courtesy of her stepmother) is that she can't seem to stay dead. Every night she rises, with a horrible craving for blood. She's not taking too well to a liquid diet. 

Worst of all, her new friends have the ridiculous idea that Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen, and they want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious, power-hungry vampire in five centuries—a badly dressed Bela Lugosi wannabe, natch. Frankly, Betsy couldn’t care less about vamp politics, but they have a powerful weapon of persuasion: designer shoes. How can any self-respecting girl say no? But a collection of Ferragamos isn’t the only temptation for Betsy. It’s just a lot safer than the scrumptious Sinclair—a seductive bloodsucker whose sexy gaze seems as dangerous as a stake through the heart…

Undead and Unwed (Queen Betsy, book one) by MaryJanice Davidson

Start date: Tuesday, July 8, 2014

End date: Friday, July 11, 2014

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

            When the novel begins, Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor is already (un)dead. The day before her death unfolds in that she is late for work, fixes the copy machine for her incompetent coworkers, and chases after her cat who is stuck in snow on the other side of the road. A truck hits her while she crosses the street and her body slams into a tree, killing her. She wakes up in a funeral parlor dressed in a tacky, pink power suit and her stepmother's last year, knock-off designer shoes. It's her mission to recover her designer shoes from her stepmother, which she does within the first forty pages, and then the rest of the novel is focused on other vampires mixing her up in their politics. 

Betsy angered me. I found her to be unlikeable, both as a narrator and a main character. She's a completely passive character. She’s incredibly whiney. She mentions her height—we get it; you’re tall—too often (see: height breakdown). Her judgment is lacking. When she wakes up from her death, her first instinct is to attempt to kill herself repeatedly by jumping off a building, drowning herself in the Mississippi River, electrocuting herself by grabbing a power line, drinking a bottle of bleach, stabbing herself in the heart with a butcher’s knife, and getting the tar beat out of her by muggers. None of them work but she tries over and over again as if she thinks, “Maybe this time I’ll die!” Betsy is trying to kill herself when she intervenes in a mugging. She wants the men to beat her to death and, you know, not rape and murder the woman and her daughter. The daughter tells Betsy she’s a vampire because she sees Betsy's fangs hanging out. Up until that point, Betsy thought she was a zombie despite having an unquenchable thirst. She’s so stupid. 

And one of those people who doesn't want to admit they're racist. Betsy’s response to be accused of being racist is that unconvincing argument I’m sure most of you have heard someone say before: “I’m not racist; I have a friend who’s [insert race here].” For your interpretation:

I was flabbergasted. I don’t think I’d ever been accused of prejudice before. I mean, everybody who knows me knows Jessica’s my best friend. And anybody who knows Jessica knows she’s smarter, prettier, thinner, and richer than I am. If anything, I tended to assume blacks (“Never African Americans,” Jessica had schooled me. “Shit, my grandparents were from Jamaica.”) were smarter and more successful than I was. Because the ones I knew were. (Davidson 179)

Her whole argument is that she can't be racist because she's friends with a person of a different race. Earth to Betsy: it doesn't matter if you're married to a person of a different race, you can still be racist.

The reason Betsy is called racist in the first place is because she asks Mitzi, one of Sinclair's sexual partners, where the kitchen is when she gets lost in Sinclair's house. Admittedly, Mitzi rips Betsy a new one for her question unnecessarily. However, Betsy’s response is to call Mitzi a slut in several different ways and that's how their tête-à-tête ends. Mitzi is embarrassed, and Betsy feels superior. So on top of being racist, Betsy is a slut shamer. Karen emerges afterwards and says that Mitzi needed to be put into her place. Could this get worse? It does. After finding out Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen, Mitzi falls into hysterics about having been rude to the queen. That serves no purpose but to further humiliate Mitzi. It’s like rubbing salt in a wound.

I'm just gonna get it out of the way. It bothers me the way race is handled in this novel. Jessica’s race is mentioned multiple times. She's described in the stereotypical way I’ve noticed writers describe black characters. Davidson uses the “Egyptian goddess” comparison that, whenever describing a beautiful character implies that other black physical characteristics aren’t beautiful. Newsflash writers: labeling all your black characters as Egyptian gods/goddesses/queens/kings isn’t original or descriptive. When it comes to Sinclair’s sexual partners, race is handled the same way. Mitzi’s race is stated while Karen’s isn’t. Even though Betsy states Karen has a British accent, this by no means designates Karen’s race since there are many different ethnicities living in Great Britain. The characters whose race is never stated: Betsy, Antonia, Betsy’s dad, Betsy’s mom, Sinclair, Nostro, Nick Berry, Marc, Tina, Dennis, Karen. If a character's race isn't stated, it's safe to assume the writer shares the character's race. I’m mad their races aren't stated for two reasons. Davidson felt it necessary to specify the race of some characters but not all, and over half of the characters in the book are lacking a rich character description because they're vaguely described, which is just bad writing.

So-called “bad” characters have no redeeming qualities, leaving them flat and underdeveloped. Antonia, Mitzi and Nostro are the clear-cut bad people in the novel. The concept of the wicked stepmother is a clichéd trope (to name a few examples of movies that use this trope: Cinderella, Snow White, The Parent Trap). I’m not opposed to using this type of character because “evil” stepparents do exist, but how Davidson describes Antonio O’Neill Taylor makes her a flat character. She’s obsessed with money and expensive things. She begins dating Betsy’s dad while he’s still married to Betsy’s mom. She’s clearly a gold digger who has no tact or shame. When Betsy goes to her dad’s house to retrieve her stolen shoes, she overhears Antonia saying, “‘Godammit, Arnie, you should sue their asses off! They lost your daughter’s body! Now the funeral’s been delayed who knows how long, we’re going to have to postpone our vacation—Jesus Christ!’” (Davidson 37).  While Antonia’s character is amusing because of the out of this world things she says and does, she’s unrealistic. If you were to place her in the real world, she would be a caricature.

Mitzi is described as handsome. She’s supposed to inches taller than our very tall main character. She has a deep, throaty voice and eyes like Keanu Reeves that look nice on him but weird on her according to Betsy. She’s in serious need of a pedicure—I’m still not entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean—and she’s quick to call people racist. She’s proud of her position as one of Sinclair’s sexual partners, but that pride breaks down quickly when Betsy calls her a slut in not so many words. Ironically, Betsy calls Mitzi an Amazon, which is like the pot calling the kettle black, as you’ll see later when I break the heights of the characters down. Mitzi is a minor character, and as a minor character, she only has one part, which is the one in which she fights with Betsy. She serves no purpose but to stir up feelings of jealousy in Betsy (which she hasn't admitted but are clearly there). 

Nostro is this novel’s villain. He’s an old vampire who has sired a lot of children and/or takes in newly made vampires, whom he barely feeds in order to keep control over them. Over the centuries, he has attempted to overthrow many governments, so he’s power hungry. He surrounds himself with vampire stereotypes; his meetings take place in a mausoleum, his followers dress in old gothic attire, he calls his followers his Undead Children, and his name is short for Nostradamus—not his real name. He’s the epitome of what Betsy finds unattractive and the exact opposite of Sinclair. Nostro’s shorter than her (she just can’t help mentioning her height) and balding. He has a bit of a beer gut, a cleft chin, watery eyes and “icky, cold lips.” His fashion sense is nonexistent. I'll place this here for your analysis:

He wasn’t nearly as impressive as the other guy [Sinclair]: medium height for a guy, about a head shorter than me, slightly chubby around the middle, a clef chin (what Jessica would call, with unfailing tact, an “ass face”), watery blue eyes. And—(groan!)—dressed in a black tuxedo. Not a cape, but almost as bad. (Davidson 77)

Sinclair is a vampire, younger than Nostro, who is attempting to defeat Nostro and his Fiends. His sire is Tina, whose sire is Nostro. Since Nostro starves his followers, Tina accidentally made Sinclair on a secret binge. Sinclair was “born” more powerful than the average baby vamp and Nostro found out about him. Nostro wanted to kill Sinclair since he knew Sinclair would be more powerful than him one day, but Tina hid him from Nostro and ran away. Sinclair and Nostro have been warring ever since. By contrast, Sinclair’s description is rich with detail. It’s three paragraphs long versus the less than one full paragraph Nostro gets.

He was unbelievable. Easily the most amazing-looking man I’d ever seen outside of Playgirl…Tall, very tall—at a least four inches taller than me, and I’m not petite. He had thick, inky black hair that swept back from his face in lush waves…His features were classicly handsome: strong nose, good chin, nice broad forehead. His eyes were beautiful and frightening: deepest black, with a hard glitter to them, like stars shining in the dark winter sky. And his mouth was saved from being tender by a cruel twist of the upper lip…He was so broad through the shoulders I wondered how he’d fit through the door, and his arms looked thick and powerful. The charcoal suit superbly set off his long frame, and speaking of long, his fingers were slim and straight; they looked deft and capable. (Davidson 76)

Yet again, Betsy’s height is mentioned for no real reason. Now is as good a time as any, so let’s discuss height in the novel for a moment. Nostro is of “medium height for a guy;” he’s not short and he’s not tall. I take that to mean that he is of average height for men. Average height for an American man is 5’ 9”. Betsy says he’s “a head shorter” than her. Being a head taller than someone means that the top of their head reaches the bottom of your chin. There’s no standard measurement for “a head” since everyone’s head differs, but I found a measurement that seems at least semi-accurate of between eight and fourteen inches. For our purposes, we’ll go with eight inches. Betsy is then 6’ 5”. The average height for an American woman is 5’ 4”, so Betsy is a foot and an inch taller than the average woman is. Mitzi is "inches taller" than Betsy. We'll say that measurement means a few inches taller, which we'll call roughly four inches. That means that Mitzi is 6' 9". Mitzi is a foot and five inches taller than the average woman is. Only 0.7 percent of American women are 5’ 10” or taller, making them both very freaking tall. Betsy says that Sinclair is “at least four inches taller” than her, which puts him at 6’ 9”. Sinclair is a foot taller than the average man is. Only 3.9 percent of American men are 6’ 2” or taller, so Betsy, Mitzi and Sinclair are all members of the Tall Club. Consider Jessica now. After Betsy shows up (un)dead at her dad’s house, Jessica weeps against Betsy’s neck. Because Jessica’s head reaches Betsy’s neck and not her chin, I would say there’s at least a ten inch difference between the two women (the size of a "head" plus two inches for good measure). That would make Jessica 5’ 7”. When Jessica throws herself against Betsy in a desperate embrace, Betsy states that she weighs “about ninety pounds” (Davidson 42). At that height and weight, Jessica’s BMI is 14.1, making her brutally underweight. A normal BMI range for that height is between 18.5 and 24.9 or 121 to 158 pounds. No one in this novel has a realistic height or weight.

Back to the story at hand. The scene with Antonia and Betsy’s dad serves no purpose besides to alert them that Betsy’s (un)dead, which is unimportant since they do nothing about it. (Very late in the novel, Betsy’s dad shows up at her doorstep and tells her that he wants nothing to do with her.) Jessica Watkins, Betsy’s best friend, is out of place at Betsy’s dad’s house. In fact, the explanation as to why she’s there is that she suspected Antonia was wearing Betsy’s hard-earned designer shoes at her funeral, so she followed them home to get Betsy’s shoe collection back.

Betsy’s shoe addiction is her whole personality. She talks about her shoe collection before she dies, she storms into her dad’s house to retrieve her shoe collection, she likes Sinclair more when she sees his expensive shoes, she’s bribed to fight Nostro with shoes, her kidnapper makes it a point to tell her he burned her shoes to emotionally torment her, and the novel ends with Sinclair supplying her with shoes. This infuriates me. Betsy is a stereotype of women. She’s pretty. She’s obsessed with shoes and fashion. She’s not very bright. She’s bad at math. She gets kidnapped more than the average person should be, so she’s in need of rescuing. Need I go on?

The only character I actually liked is Tina. I believe she's also the most poorly treated out of all the women in the novel. She was a teenager when she was turned into a vampire. Her sire is Nostro who starved and beat her. She’s Sinclair’s sire, which should amount to something since he is a very powerful vampire, but she bows down to him. She’s fiercely loyal and, on multiple occasions, willing to sacrifice herself to save Betsy who she believes is her queen. She spies on Nostro to save Betsy from death. She’s raped to save Betsy from being raped. She never judges, and she answers any questions Betsy asks of her. She only asks Betsy for one thing in return (a kiss), and Betsy rejects her. Most unsung hero here, guys.

I think the premise of this book is rife with possibilities: a person becomes a vampire without a sire and turns out to be the prophesied royalty meant to bond all vampires. I understand there’s humor in the fact that Betsy is the most unlikely queen. Believe me, I understood every time a vampire found out her name was Elizabeth Taylor and her nickname was Betsy that it was supposed to be humorous, but Betsy just didn’t work for me. I didn’t really care for the fighting between Nostro and Sinclair (warring vampires, bore) because it was really cheesy. I thought the Fiends were a nice touch, though, and gave Nostro a bit of a scientist vibe. Sinclair never stopped being creepy and unattractive to me. He summoned Betsy to his house while he was having group sex, which is just so classy. His personality was overbearing; he was constantly like, “I will win you over and you will be mine” with an eyebrow wiggle and a wink. Ugh. This is supposed to be the man she's fawning all over? Give me a break.

         If the main characters had different personalities, I might have liked this book more.