The vamps were just too alluring. And their victims just never seemed to think they deserved better than the treatment they were given. It was almost as if they were afraid to put their foot down, because they thought they’d never get anything better…

Insatiable is Meg Cabot’s entry into the current vampire craze that, instead of taking a romantic vision of vampires, takes every opportunity to point out how vampires are, well, soul-sucking parasites who prey on those weaker than them, whose minds are easiest to be read and manipulated.

I wish I had liked this book more. Cabot and I are obviously on the same page with our hate of vampires. In her book (haha, LITERALLY, but that’s not how I meant it at first), there is nothing sexy about vampires except for the one vampire who has no interest in killing humans and instead wants to keep the whole vamp thing on the DL and foster positive vampire-human interaction. He’s supposed to be kind of sexy, but the reader is constantly reminded that he’s DEAD (or undead, I guess) and not a viable life partner.  Oh, and also that he has to lie about who he is in order to start a relationship, and even though he is badass, the fact that he’s a dead dude who feeds on the blood of humans. So he has magnetism and a ripped bod, but the whole vampire thing is not sexy at all. It’s creepy and causes way more problems than he’s worth. At least that’s how I read it.

Anyway, the reason I wish I liked this book more is that it could very easily be read as a metaphor for violent and imbalanced relationships. In fact, there are pretty explicit comparisons made between the vampires who feed on girls and abusive men. However, there’s just too much going on for it to be about that one thing. So much so that I can’t even figure out how to review this except to say that it was just kind of there.

Basically, I was interested in the book when I was reading it, but when I put it down, I had no interest in it whatsoever. There were no standout characters, and nothing really for me to sink my teeth into. (See what I did there?) I think it’d be good for a beach or pool read. Or a lunch time read that only requires lunch break levels of commitment. (Which is when I read it, which is why it took so long, and I finally had to just had to bring it home and read it after work Friday so I could be DONE ALREADY, GEEZ.)

It’s not bad; it’s not good. It’s just kind of…there.