Overbite
Meg Cabot

William Morrow / HarperCollins
February 07, 2012/ISBN: 2011/978-0-06-173511-0
Urban Paranormal (REVIEW 2)
Amazon

Reviewed by P.L. Blair

Overbite Satisfies the Reader's Palate

Meena Harper is a human in a world plagued by vampires and demons. A human with a special gift: When she meets someone, she can see how that person will die. She's been hired by a special unit of the Vatican - the Palatine Guard - assigned to its new branch in Lower Manhatten.

That's where all hell, literally, breaks loose as Meena is attacked by an old boyfriend who's been Turned into a vampire … saved by a later boyfriend, Lucien Antonescu, who is the son of Dracula …

Meanwhile, Meena's partner, demon-hunter Alaric Wulf, has discovered that tourists are coming to New York City, and … disappearing.

It seems there's a new breed of vampire in town, vampires who not only drink the blood but eat the flesh of their victims. Meena and Alaric have allies, they're members of the Palatine Guard after all, but Meena has to figure out if Lucien is ally or enemy as she and Alaric deal with the new threat.

And then there's the priest, Father Henrique, who has recently been sent to New York …

And Lucien seeks a little book, a book of hours, that he remembers his mother reading to him as a child …

Meg Cabot is my favorite kind of author - a storyteller, who weaves a lot of threads into a wonderfully satisfying read. Her vampires are dark, dangerous and, at least in Lucien's case, alluring.

Overbite is a sequel to Insatiable, Cabot's book that introduces Meena Harper. But you don't have to have read the one (I haven't yet) to enjoy the other. Everything you need to know about Meena, Alaric, Lucien and Cabot's other ongoing characters is provided... having said that, I now hasten to add that I will be reading Insatiable in the near future. And I hope there will be additional Meena Harper stories in future.

One other small point; a feature called the Minetta Stream plays a significant role in Cabot's book. The stream really does exist. In an Author's Note at the end of the book, Cabot says the name given to it by the original inhabitants of Manhattan, the Lenape Indians, was Mannette, which translates to "Devil's Water."

The stream has been built over, Cabot notes, its waters diverted into several fountains.

I love her Author's Note nearly as much as I love her book, which is, by the way, a lot!

Review 2