Undead and Unwed (Queen Betsy, Book 1)

by MaryJanice Davidson

2004

Status

Available

Publication

Berkley Sensation (2004), 288 pages

Description

Fantasy. Fiction. Romance. HTML: First Betsy Taylor loses her job, then she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites is that she can't seem to stay dead. And now 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..

User reviews

LibraryThing member Lman
This is a fun read – a non-too-serious, entertaining, exuberant look at life, literally, from another side. Betsy led a somewhat normal one for a blonde, six-foot secretary, obsessed with designer shoes. But on her 30th birthday Betsy loses her job and has a fatal contact with an SUV – and it
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just gets worse when she ‘wakes', two days later, in a funeral home dressed, courtesy of her detested stepmother, in an absurd pink suit and cheap shoes!

Welcome to the new world of Betsy Taylor, who, though still as shallow in death as in life, is not your average ‘newly arisen’ vampire. Betsy just wants to keep her old ways – despite her sensory powers being much greater, her movements much faster and stronger, her bodily functions virtually non-existent and being unable to eat her favourite foods; well any food actually. As she comes to terms with these unreal experiences, thrown into the mix are the change in associations with living friends and family, the inevitable interest of the local vampires in her presence; and the difficulties in addressing the politics and power-plays inherent with becoming their foretold queen. And a mother who is adamant: "You know, Betsy, just because you're dead doesn't mean you have to be unwed."

With tongue-firmly-in-cheek this is an engaging, impertinent swipe at aspects of modernity through a brash, sassy blonde bombshell heroine, who, though easily swayed by a good pair of shoes, has a heart of gold and an essential belief in decency. Taking nothing too seriously, with some laugh-out-loud moments I expect the future anecdotes of Betsy’s experiences will, like this book, be most amusing, and very enjoyable.
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LibraryThing member anterastilis
I've heard about this book on and off for the last three years or so. It's a vampire chick lit series. Seriously.

Betsy has a horrible birthday: she loses her job and then she gets run over by an SUV. The next thing she knows, she finds herself in a coffin (mercifully not buried yet...I got really
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creeped out by the short scene of her figuring out she's in a coffin) and then realizing that she is a vampire.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the setting for this weird little book was Minneapolis. The vampire mansion is on Lake Minnetonka, Betsy does some crimefighting along Lake Street, and her old apartment is in Edina. She's got a couple of good friends that stick with her even though she's undead. The other vampires don't know what to think of her though...holy water makes her sneeze instead of burn, she can walk around in daylight without bursting into flames, and she is able to wear a crucifix without turning into ashes. She simply HAS to be the Vampire Queen of the prophecy.

Betsy's a bit dippy for me, as are most chick lit heroines (seriously, I don't think shoes are THAT IMPORTANT), but it was still pretty funny. It's got a romancey aspect to it, but I wouldn't call it a romance novel. It's an incredibly unique concept for a book, and a refreshing one. This is the first ever vampire book I've ever read. Vampires have always freaked me out (I can't stand the sight or mention of blood) but it's hard to be freaked out by crimefighting vampires that obsess about fashion.
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LibraryThing member krau0098
My husband and I listened to this on audio book on a car trip to South Dakota. I downloaded the audiobook out of pure curiosity. I have heard a lot about these novels and MaryJanice has written a ton of them. So I wondered what all of the hubbub was about.

In this book we meet Betsy who has just
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been fired from her job as a secretary. Betsy has a thing for fancy shoes and lives with her cat. One night after chasing after her cat, she is smacked by an SUV. She wakes up in the morgue only to find that she is a vampire and that she is curiously unaffected by things that seem to plague her fellow undead compatriots. Nostro, the resident evil vampire, who is trying to recruit her into his clan, kidnaps her. Another vampire, the tasty looking Eric Sinclair, is also after her to join his cause. Betsy is trying her best to resume her live before death and wants no part in vampire politics.

The quality of the reading of the audio book was very good and I have no complaints with the production of the audio book.

As a native Minnesotan I loved that this book took place in the Twin Cities. My familiarity with the setting made some parts of the book funnier than they probably would have been to a non-native. This book is not a fine work of literature. It's full of slang, the jokes are generally stupid jokes on word play, and sometimes slapstickish. Still, the book was mildly entertaining and non-involving. My husband and I chortled at some of the jokes. It was just the right type of book to listen to in the car. I never felt that attached to it. It was easy to leave the car in the middle of the book and easy to get back into the book when we resumed driving.

I guess it depends what you want in a book. This book was an easy read, kind of fun, and very chic-centric if you know what I mean. I was surprised my husband found it as amusing as he did. It is not an intellectual read, not really that well written, and I have to admit a lot of the fashion-speak was lost on me. I am by no means a shoe expert and couldn't really respect Betsy's shoe obsession. I did respect the blatant-ness of Betsy's character; Betsy's sheer candidness and non-normal reaction to some of the situations she ended up in were hilarious at times.

Will I read more of these books? Probably not. There's just too much fluff there; the end of this book was already boring me with the over-the-top humor and the uninspired writing. If I was stuck in the car on another trip to South Dakota, and I had absolutely nothing else to do, I might listen to the second audio book. This was just another in a series of mediocre books that I have read lately.
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LibraryThing member phyllisd
A cute, funny, easy read: I'll continue with the series. Some of the one-liners seemed very cliched.
LibraryThing member la_librarian
Great start to this series. Betsy dies then wakes up in the morgue. She can't stay dead and she has a horrible thirst...full of comedy and a little romance Besty the Vampire Queen is funny, funny, funny.
LibraryThing member magst
Cute book. I really enjoyed reading it, but can honestly say I'll never re-read it.
LibraryThing member hoosgracie
Hysterical. Chick lit meets vampires. Betsy’s 30th birthday sucks – she’s laid off, her party is cancelled and she’s killed chasing after her cat. She wakes up a couple days later in the morgue in an awful pink suit and payless shoes and boy is she mad. Really wonderful.
LibraryThing member Tudorrl
I enjoyed this book, and just took it for what it was - light, funny and frothy. No more, no less. It made me laugh out loud in places and that's exactly what I wanted. Sure, its not going to answer the great philosophical questions of the day - but then, if you want that you probably WON'T be
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reading about a sexy Vampire Queen with a designer shoe fetish....
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LibraryThing member paltner
Betsy Taylor’s day went from bad to worse. First she lost her job, then her birthday party was canceled because of a freak April snowstorm, then she trekked out of her house to rescue her ingrate cat only to be hit by an SUV. If that wasn’t bad enough, she woke up dead, inside a morgue, wearing
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a tacky suit and grungy Payless shoes. Once over the shock of being a vampire, Betsy sets out to get even with the evil stepmother who picked out the ugly burial clothes and stole her prized collection of designer shoes - just because she thought Betsy was dead!

Eventually Betsy connects with other vampires, not because she wants to but because they insist on it. The first undead character she encounters is Nostro, a short, potbellied evil-doer who demands that Betsy join his clan. Nuts to that says Betsy as she blows him off. Next to appear is Eric Sinclair, a self assured, sexy, virile hunk that alternately enrages and engages our undead heroine. Eric and his sidekick Tina tell Betsy that she is the prophesied Vampire Queen, but before she can take the throne they need her help in getting rid of Nostro.

Despite being a bit on the shallow side – style and designer labels are everything – Betsy is an engaging, sexy, likable gal who will win every readers heart. Not many vampire stories will make you laugh out loud, but his novel is the exception. Unwed and Undead is thoroughly intelligent and exceedingly funny.
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LibraryThing member rocalisa
All through this book, I kept changing my mind over whether or not I liked it. It didn't hit me between the eyes as a fantastic book and while I smiled wryly at some of Betsy's comments and reactions I didn't think they were spectacularly funny. All the same, the story did grow on me and by the end
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I was looking forward to reading the next one in the series. I don't plan to rush out and buy my own copies at this point, but I did enjoy the book.

This sounds like a rather lukewarm review, and I guess it is. I enjoyed this book, but it didn't drag me in, tie me down and make me unable to focus on anything else while I was reading it. So it was good, but I don't know that, for me, it deserves the raves I've seen it receive.
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LibraryThing member CheriePie69
This book was cute and funny. Betsy (Elizabeth) Taylor is so not like any other vampire you've ever met (or read about). Holy water, crosses, even sunlight cannot hurt Betsy, and as she learns to come to terms with her newly undead life, she learns the ropes of Vampires 101 from the tall, dark, and
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gorgeous Sinclair, whom she both lusts after and despises all at once. The other vampires she's met have begun to notice these differences in Betsy as well and claim her to be their prophesied Vampire Queen, a job which Betsy vehemently denies. A battle ensues in which the tyrannical Nostro, who has ruled the vampires for hundreds of years, must be overthrown in order to return peace to the vampire community.

The quirkiness of this book had me laughing out loud at times, and I'm looking forward to reading Undead and Unemployed, the next in the series. The short story by Mary Janice Davidson in the Cravings anthology, Dead Girls Don't Dance, takes place between the events of Undead and Unwed and Undead and Unemployed. Betsy and Sinclair only make a minor appearance in that story, with the focus being on Andrea, a vampire making her way from Chicago to St. Paul to pay homage to the new Vampire Queen.
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LibraryThing member SimonW11
After being killed by a car Betsy tall blonde ex-model ex-secretary with an attention span measured in microseconds wakes up in a funeral parlour.
It seems she is now a vampire. thankfully her friends and family are on the whole supportive so she hopes to continue as normal. Unfortunately the other
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vampires dissagree. Violence, kinky sex, murder and hanging around in cemetaries wearing evening dress is their preferred behaviour and it seems she might their next queen. There are a some viscous fights;

"So when did you die you don't look a day over sixty?"
Her flat bosom heaved in indignation "I became gloriously transformed in 1972"
"That explains the nails and the bell bottoms"

and some horrific torture scenes
"I threw all your new shoes into the fire" he whispered into my ear" I howled in agony and thrashed ineffectually "Bastard!" I wept,"You'll pay for that."

Somehow it failed to win any major literary prizes, but it brightened my Sunday.
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LibraryThing member Meijhen
Fun read, not particularly challenging. Main character is sharp-tongued but not amazingly bright, a combination that's not always easy to pull off. Enjoyable airplane or commute material.
LibraryThing member francescadefreitas
OK, this book is silly, the sex scenes are pretty crude, and the jokes about shoes are done to death. But I picked it up to read the first page, and kept my eyelids open with toothpicks to finish it. It made me snigger out loud several times. And there are a few scenes that are genuinely
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emotionally touching. Also, the vampire wanting to resume normal life is a spin I haven't encountered before.

I look forward to reading the rest of this series, especially when I need to recover from overwrought epic fantasies.
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LibraryThing member Ammonite
Sex is no substitute for plot, damn it. I'm tempted to count the pages devoted to descriptions of Hot Vampire Sex, but I have better things to do with my life. It is possible to write good vampire fiction with little/no sex: 'Sunshine', 'The Historian', 'Travelling with the Dead', the works by Anne
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Rice that I've read. I can't help feeling that Davidson is substituting HVS for plot development and detail. One moment Sinclair, Tina et al are trapped by fire/encircling vampires/holy water/etc, the next they show up without explanation to free the heroine and indulge in HVS. It's a shame. While the heroine's character strikes me as too abrasive to be real, Davidson can write (or is well-edited). Perhaps if someone gave her a plot and some characters who deserved flesh?
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LibraryThing member tandyk
I read this book to give me a break from the other more serious shape shifter books out there. I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!! There is so much humor and she is not the typical vamp, with her love for shoes. Oh.. this girl has attitude also.
LibraryThing member TheLibraryhag
OK, first Betsy is attacked by vampire fiends but survives. Later, just as her 30th birthday looms, she loses her job and is hit by a car and killed, sort of. She rises, in the tackiest outfit imaginable, just before her funeral. Betsy is no normal vampire. She is the Queen, promised in the Book of
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the Dead. But Betsy has never been one to follow the rules, so a little thing like death is not going to stop her from chatting with her friends and family, or shopping (forget blood, this girl has a major shoe craving). However, the other vampires keep insisting that she fulfill her role as Queen which involves a lot of fighting and being consort to a very hunky, but annoying vampire King. I really enjoyed this book and the whole series (some more than others). Betsy is a smart mouth beauty. She is very funny and keeps the laughs coming. The sex is frequent and gritty.
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LibraryThing member Darrol
A different twist on the vampire story, but I expected it to be funnier.
LibraryThing member mandolin82
Completely silly and very engaging. Great when you need something light and fun. Plus some very scintillating bedroom scenes. Do not listen to it in the car with your 14 year old! I love this series for the lighted hearted, yet engaging writing. I like the whole series, but didn't include them all
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in my library because then I ended up with mostly vampire books when I asked for suggestions.
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LibraryThing member candlelitdreams
The Queen Betsy series is whitty and charming. It kept me laughing (or grinning) until the very end! How anyone could be that in love with shoes!!?!!
LibraryThing member bookwormteri
Betsy wakes up dead and Queen of the Vampires, but before she can figure out how to adjust there is another who steps in and ruins her Ferragamos. Naturally he must be destroyed.
LibraryThing member sdtaylor555
On the whole, this series is just too silly for me. This first book was pretty good, but the succeeding books just went too far.
LibraryThing member aapike
This is a hilarious paranormal romance series. Betsy is the most unlikely vampire you will ever read about. She is tall, blonde, and has a passion for footware! But Betsy does not become a vampire in a usual way- or react to her new status in a conventional way. However, once she accepts her undead
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role, more surprises are in store for her - including a delicious alpha-male that she tries to resist again and again!
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LibraryThing member miyurose
This book is a mix of paranormal and chick lit, so if you don’t like either genre you need to avoid it like a vampire avoids garlic. Oops, sorry about the slip into lame similes. I thought this was pretty good. It was cute, almost precious at points, but I liked Betsy’s no-nonsense reaction to
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waking up and discovering that she’s now undead. My one complaint is that I found the language to be rather crude at at times. I’m no prude, but the sudden switch to almost vulgarity during the sex/feeding scenes was rather jarring. But it was a fun diversion and the reader of the audiobook was a perfect fit, so I’ll definitely be listening to more in the series.
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LibraryThing member jimmaclachlan
Make Buffy a vampire & you have Betsy (don't call me Elizabeth) Taylor (the original movie Buffy). She's a caricature valley girl who can be bribed with the latest fashion shoes. Over the top for me, but I've never cared for the type, don't even find them particularly funny. She's super vain,
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powerful & pretty stupid, but somehow the book was readable & amusing. I won't go out of my way to get another, but if I come across one cheap, I will pick it up & read it.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2004-03-02

Physical description

288 p.; 4.2 inches

ISBN

042519485X / 9780425194850

Barcode

1602049
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