Book Review: Jennifer the Damned by Karen Ullo

Jennifer the Damned by Karen Ullo

You know how teenagers are always overdramatizing their lives? Everything they do is fraught with peril for themselves or for others, most likely for both. One wrong move and someone dies. Or falls in love. Or suffers a humiliation that will never be lived down for the rest of their lives. Or eat something horrible. Social life is a minefield for teenagers.

This book presents Jennifer, a teenage orphan living with nuns in their Louisiana convent and going to their strict Catholic high school. She has a strange diet, only raw beef (the nuns sear it a little bit to make her dining more palatable to them). She is about to go through a big change. Jennifer's mom (who vanished when she was a pre-teen) was a vampire and so is Jennifer. She hasn't fully matured (which takes sixteen years according to this book) but she is on the cusp of wanting only to drink human blood. Jennifer has not adopted the nuns' Catholic faith but has bought in to the truth about human souls and the afterlife. Only Jennifer, as a vampire, has no soul and she will live forever (so no afterlife). Once her vampirism kicks in, she becomes more miserable as she tries to follow her mom's advice on how to hunt and to stay off the radar of law enforcement and other people. Her life gets very messy very quickly.

The book provides some nice twists on the vampire lore. The delayed maturation has a nice parallel with puberty (though she becomes more beautiful and glamorous as a vampire) though that is not the main focus of the book. The main interest is Jennifer's moral struggle and depression about her state in life. Without a soul, she has no prospect of going to Heaven. She recognizes that she will have a very difficult life and she does not enjoy killing even though drinking blood gives her great pleasure. She recognizes the Eucharist as real and the most potent Blood she could ever drink. But her mom warned her against it. Sure, movies and TV shows have a lot of wrong ideas about vampires but coming into contact with the truly divine is truly deadly for vampires. What Jennifer really wants most of all is redemption but she has a long and seemingly hopeless journey ahead of her.

The book is written almost exclusively from her perspective and she has the teenaged angst and hyperbole I mentioned above. But she really is in life and death situations; she does not know how to handle infatuation with boys; her new vampire strength gives her plenty of opportunities to excel and to get revenge on abusive classmates (even the ones who are only jerks). She has a larger life due to her extra-special circumstances. It's hard not to root for her to find a way to do the right thing. I found the book very enjoyable and very interesting.

Recommended, highly for vampire fans.