If this book had a subtitle, it would’ve been Undead and Unemployed: Going into Holding Pattern. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed reading it, and as with Undead and Unwed, once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down (the pacing is just ungodly fast). But it just didn’t satisfy. It was like eating a chunk of Tofurkey when what you really wanted was a slice of real prime rib. Not much happens in this book, none of the characters grow or develop in any appreciable way, and we don’t learn much about vampire lore. There is plenty of snarking, though, and we do find out that a house riddled with termites can still sell for $150,000 in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

Our intrepid narrator, shoe aficionado and newly-crowned Queen of Vampires, Betsy, is determined to lead as normal a life as she possibly can. To this end, she goes job-hunting, and manages to land a job right out of her wettest of wet dreams: shoe salesperson in Heaven (i.e. Macy’s at The Mall of America). Betsy’s all “Hell yeah, employee discount!” but as always, there’s bitter with the sweet. For one thing, termites decided her house was the perfect location for a spring break party and then figure ah, what the hell, might as well stay on through summer vacation. For another, there’s a new vigilante group in town whose mission is whacking as many vampires as they can get their stakes on.

The house problem is easily solved, thanks to her best friend Jessica’s unending supply of moolah: they just rent a huge mansion—one right across the street from the governor’s, in fact, and I find the thought of Betsy and Co. living across the street from a house once occupied by Jesse Ventura oddly amusing.

The second problem is a bit thornier. On one hand, Betsy is the Empress of the Undead and apparently one of her duties is making sure her subjects aren’t turned into vampire tartare. On the other hand, a lot of vampires are assholes and she’s had to yank off more than one belligerent undead headcase from their hapless victims, so what’s a staked vamp here and there? But once the thugs attack her friend Tina and make an attempt on Betsy’s own ass—well, in the immortal words of a thousand Steven Seagal flicks: This time, it’s personal. So with the help of the ever hot, ever well-endowed vampire Sinclair and the motley crew of sidekicks we met in the first book (Tina, Jessica, and Marc the Cute Gay Doctor) plus a fresh batch of new sidekicks, Betsy attempts to hold down her job and solve the mystery at the same time. Some righteous asskicking is handed down, but the villains would’ve gotten away with it all if it weren’t for those meddling kids and… Oh, wait. Sorry, wrong campy, insubstantial pseudo-horror comedy series.

The problems I had with the first book are all magnified in this one. The lack of substance, the lack of character development, the chip on Betsy’s shoulder that resembles a flourishing young redwood when it comes Sinclair—I mean what is WRONG with her? This guys saves her ass AGAIN and provides her with the most wonderful orgasms AGAIN and still she snarls and distrusts him, which makes me wonder if she has some kind of a permanent dent in her cerebral cortex from getting her head smashed by that Aztek (godDAMN that’s one ugly car—I mean, speaking of subcortical damage, what in the fuck were those designers smoking when they came up with that hideous hosebeast?).

Aside from a pretty neat plot development at the end that stems from the termite problem, this book is pretty much completely dispensable. You KNOW the plot is very, very light when even a long-winded bitch like me can summarize it in three paragraphs. Nobody grows, changes or learns much of note, and at the end of the book almost everything is returned to the status quo. Betsy is still shallow, sarcastic and not very pleased with being undead royalty, and she’s still totally pissed at her consort, Sinclair, for little to no good reason. Sinclair is still a mystery in many, many ways, but still TOTALLY FUCKING HOT. Etc.

What’s so frustrating is, there’s so much material that Davidson could’ve explored instead of just shooting out more one-liners. Why is Betsy so different from the other vampires? How exactly is a vampire created? There are various mentions of vampire laws and such—how are they enforced? Also, what happened to the vampires who were extremely loyal to Nostro in the first book? And more details about Sinclair, Tina and Marc would not have been amiss. Seeing Betsy interact more with her parents would’ve been interesting too; her dad wishes she was still dead, for Christ’s sake, a hint of conflict that was raised in Undead and Unwed but quickly glossed over.

But despite all my complaints, this book really is a lot of fun to read. Like the first novel, the zippy, snarky dialogue is probably its best feature. Shit, scratch that, it’s just about the only feature in this book. It made me chuckle out loud, though, and I can’t dislike something that’s this much fun, hence the B- grade instead of a C-.

If Betsy keeps going in this vein without growing or changing as a person, I’m afraid I’m going to get tired of her, and I don’t want to get tired of her; I really enjoy her voice. It’s just starting to resemble a one-note melody, and god knows I don’t want Phillip Glass in novel form.