This is an extremely good series! We are introduced to Queen Betsy, aka Elizabeth Taylor, directly after she losses her job on her thirty birthday! What a bad way to ring in your new year. Shortly after Betsy is killed by a Pontiac Aztek out of control, and a well placed tree, she wakes up in a morgue with an incredibly ugly outfit on. Betsy quickly learns she is the prophesized Vampire Queen that the hidden vampire community has been waiting for. Throughout the ten books written so far we are exposed to the ridiculous adventures Betsy and her friends involve themselves with.
MJ writes with a sense of humor that you can easily relate to. The remarks Betsy makes are those little one-liners you quickly think of during a conversation; but never have the nerve to say. She is catty, self absorbed, obsessed with shoes, and shockingly a good friend. Vampire humor is at its best in this series.
There is only one drawback I have for the series that I’ve discovered after reading almost the entire series. After reading through the books I came to one of them that mentioned a situation with Marc (Betsy’s gay, ER doctor-roommate whom she saved from committing suicide) that I did not recall. After doing some research I came across MJ Davidson’s website where she list how she feels you should read her books. MJ has more than just the Queen Betsy series including the Wyndham Werewolf series among them. Apparently, unknown to before this point in the series, these two series overlap a bit. So…according to MJ this is how you should approach the Queen Betsy/Wyndham Werewolf series….
Q: In what order should I read the Betsy and werewolf books since they overlap and characters from anthologies frequently show up in the Undead books?
A: To keep continuity you should read the books in the following order:
- Secrets 6: Love's Prisoner
- Secrets 8: Jared's Wolf
- Undead and Unwed
- Cravings: Dead Girls Don't Dance
- Undead and Unemployed
- Bite: Biting in Plain Sight
- Derik's Bane
- Undead and Unappreciated
- Undead and Unreturnable
- Dead and Loving It
- Undead and Unpopular
- Over the Moon: Driftwood
- Undead and Uneasy
- Dead Over Heels
- Undead and Unworthy
- Undead and Unwelcome
- Undead and Undermined - Coming July 2011
- Undead and Unstable - Coming 2012
Apparently this order would have clued me into some of those moments in the books where I thought…did I have a moment of amnesia? Besides this small hiccup with the books I seriously loved them!
"Undead and Unwelcome" was by far the most "holy-crap I didn't see that one coming" book...so therefore you have to read all the others before it to get there!
I’m feigning for the next book to be released in July!! Yay!! And there is a sneak peak of “Undead and Undermined" on MJ’s coming soon page.
Happy Reading!!
