Book Review of Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready - Rock 'n Roll and Vampires

Wicked Game (WVMP Radio #1) GoodReads blurb:
Late-night radio you can sink your teeth into....
Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, 60s psychedelia, 80s Goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they're vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.
Ciara's first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WMMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station--and the link it provides to their original Life Times--the vampires would "fade," becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover becomes a matter of life and un-death.
To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara re-brands the station as "WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock 'n' Roll." In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs' vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around--next to Ciara's complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the "gimmick" enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren't so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher--and the perils graver--than any con game Ciara's ever played....

I love to learn new things from books...granted learning how to pull a con might not be the best thing to learn but who knows it might be a handy tool some day. The main character of this book, Ciara Griffin (perhaps a play on grifter)is not a saint and sometimes not even a good person. I think that's what I liked about her - she's not perfect, she keeps going back to her con-artist skills, sometimes for the good of her new friends and sometimes for her own good. I also liked the characterizatio...mI love to learn new things from books...granted learning how to pull a con might not be the best thing to learn but who knows- it might be a handy tool some day. The main character of this book, Ciara Griffin (perhaps a play on grifter) is not a saint and sometimes not even a good person. I think that's what I liked about her - she's not perfect, she keeps going back to her con-artist skills, sometimes for the good of her new friends and sometimes for her own good. It's interesting to have a main character that isn't necessarily a good person. As Ciara tries to go straight she finds that her grifter skills are only good for one thing "S&M" otherwise known as "sales and marketing" and she lands an internship at a local radio station.

The DJs at the radio station are uniquely suited to playing their decade-based radio shows, since that is the decade they "died" in and now their development is fully locked in that decade. This was probably one of my favorite concepts of the book, that the vampires are vulnerable to the changes in time just because they are unable to cope with them and it is rare that vampires survive for more than thirty years due to these difficulties. In the vampire genre, I always thought it was too easy for vampires to adapt with the times and use cell phones and drive cars even though they were born a millennium earlier. In Wicked Games, the vampires are almost crippled by the changing times and when faced with the changes they have developed some very OCD coping mechanisms like alphaphetizing CDs or counting dropped pencils or paper clips. The government is aware of vampires although the general public is not and I loved that there is a government issue pamphlet with information about vampires. 

Ciara develops tentative friendships with some of the DJs - including Shane who is the 90s decade DJ. Shane is attractive in that aloof grunge rocker kind of way though he does take an interest when it comes to Ciara. Shane and Ciara's first meet-up outside of work was hilarious when they were attacked by a crazy and drunk bridezilla who was also an arch-nemesis of Ciara's. There was drunken knife-wielding, spilled martini, shirt stealing, and an arrest to wrap up the evening. Ciara has a very sarcastic and dry humor which I love that she uses to cope with most situations though she is very vulnerable as well, especially when faced with her shortcomings. 

This was a 4.5 out of 5 for me, I loved the rock 'n roll, OCD vampires, and sarcasm. 

Book #2 is out now - Bad to the Bone and Book #3 in the WVMP series, Bring on the Night, comes out in August of this year.