Prince of Dorkness

This review is by guest reviewer/blogger Melanie.

Prince of Dorkness by Tim Collins

Nigel, last seen in the first book of this series Notes from a Totally Lame Vampire, has been dating Chloe for a while now. Nigel appears to be a 15 year old high school sophomore, but he’s really a vampire over 100 years old and Chloe is his human high school girlfriend. He loves her, but she breaks up with him. As if this wasn’t enough “Grandpa” moves in with Nigel’s family. Grandpa doesn’t do any work around the house but he does help himself to the family’s blood supply. No one in Nigel’s family understands the pain Nigel is going through and that includes Nigel losing his vampire powers. Now he’s back to being a lame vampire. But this isn’t the worst of it...Jason, the new guy is school, is a werewolf, and he’s dating Chloe. Nigel’s figures this out, but will Chloe realize it before it’s too late? The drama in Nigel’s life takes its toll on him, but the book ends with the hope of a third installment in the series.

Likes: I am not into the vampire genre at all, but this book hooked me from the first few pages. It’s a very smart book with respect to how it takes a lot of popular elements of the Twilight books and movies and weaves them into the story. Nigel’s voice is very similar to that of Greg Heffley and the style of writing in the book even including the mock notebook pages make this very similar to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. It is a very quick, fluffy read with enough teen angst to make it laugh-out-loud funny at times.

Dislikes: On more than one occasion the parents “drink too much blood,” and this is very clearly meant to parallel people drinking too much alcohol. Also when Nigel describes drinking Chloe’s blood for the first time it doesn’t take too much imagination to translate it to losing one’s virginity. While these elements are integral to the quality and enjoyment of the story, I would recommend this book to middle school kids and not upper elementary kids even though the style is so similar to other books they read and enjoy. Sadly these elements could make this book difficult to booktalk in schools depending on the make-up and tolerances of the community.