Book Review: BITE SOMEBODY, Sara Dobie Bauer

Highlights of this review:

• Six out of five stars if you name your main character after a penis wig.
• Find out how appealing your blood type is to vampires.
• Farting couches.
• How to overcome female premature ejaculation with ralphing.
• Hot surfer dudes.

If that doesn’t make you want to read on, you’re dead inside and should go and feel ashamed of yourself in a dark and preferably smelly corner.

Celia Merkin is… well first, she’s called Celia Merkin. A merkin is a genital wig, so this book was pretty much a six-out-of-five-stars from the first page.

Celia is also a newbie vampire, but it wasn’t exactly a Bella Swan / Pretty Woman transformation. She has stretch marks, she works night shifts at a gas station (where she reads Twilight as a disappointing educational exercise), has no friends, and drinks legally obtained blood from a hospital bank.

Her vampire therapist’s advice? Just bite somebody.

Dr. Savage tried to iron over the disappointed crinkle between her eyes by giving Celia a glittering grin. “Good. Twice is good. You should try journaling every night.”

Celia sank further into the leather couch cushions, which evicted the sound of a fabric fart from deep within its pillows. “But something doesn’t happen every night,” she whined.

Celia knows exactly who she wants to bite: Ian, the cute surfer dude who lives next door. He smells of woodsy BO, which is a good thing. Celia sometimes stands at the wall separating their apartments and claws it rapturously while she sniffs him.

This is a woman I can get on board with.

Luckily, Ian reciprocates–although probably not with the wall-sniffing-clawing thing.

He paused in pumping [her bike tyre, not her vagina – Anna] and looked at her with a half-smirk. “I like your style, Celia.”

“Huh?” He couldn’t be talking about her clothes.

“People are so concerned about what everyone else thinks. You’re not afraid to be really awkward. I dig it.”

Ian has floofy hair and he’s tall and slim and always says what he thinks. I like Ian.

So does Celia. So much that her fangs boing whenever she’s close to him and the woodsy BO. This is the vampire equivalent of premature ejaculation, and it makes her lithp charmingly. To counteract this, she learns to think about her icky colleague, Ralph, and send her fangs withdrawing into her gums like withering testicles.

Ian said, “Come over when you get home tonight?”

She nodded. Ralph.

Ian high-fived Imogene on his way out, and Celia stood there, legs in metaphorical cement.

“That was fucking hot,” Imogene said.

“Ralph.”

“What?”

“It’s how I calm myself.”

Imogene crossed her arms and leaned on the doorframe. “By ralphing?”

Imogene, Celia’s new best friend, is one of the many highlights of BITE SOMEBODY.

Sometimes Celia wondered if Imogene was a flaming gay guy in a past life–the angry kind that would snap his fingers a lot before he stole your boyfriend.

She clomps around in huge boots and is kind of an arsehole when she first meets Celia, who’s meek and a newbie loser and vomits all over her T-shirt.

“Are you just using me for my blood dealer?” Celia asked.

“Maybe a little.”

Celia shrugged. “Okay.”

By the way–B-negative is the tastiest blood type according to Imogene. Celia likes A-positive because it’s almost like getting a good grade in school. No love for me and my crappy O-negative but don’t mind me sitting over here feeling inadequate.

For a while, I thought Imogene was going to be the antagonist who tried to steal Ian away while Celia flailed. But Imogene isn’t an arsehole after all, especially once Celia starts to gain confidence. And I’m cheering Celia on every time she womans up, because she’s so damn relatable to fellow loser dorks. She’s not a damsel in distress and she’s not a stereotypical Strong Female Character™. She’s human–in a non-literal sense of the word.

Plus, as the fattest woman in my friendship group, SO MUCH THIS:

“I can’t wear any of your clothes, Imogene. They won’t fit.” Celia gestured to her friend, to herself, and to her friend again and then tugged hopelessly on a strapless purple satin number that could easily be confused with an expensive sock.

Everything’s going pretty well until she discovers Ian doesn’t just smell delicious to her, but to all vampires. Even ones who would rather bleed him to death than floof his hair…

I really like romcom novels, and this is up there with the best of them. You can get your own copy here and probably other places: Amazon link

Oh, and just to finish off, possibly my favourite line in the whole book and NO I AM NOT JEALOUS THAT I DIDN’T WRITE IT:

Celia muttered a random selection of letters.

The author has a website here: https://saradobiebauer.com/

And you can follow her on Twitter if you’re a fangirl like me: https://twitter.com/saradobie