Oskar is bullied at school and has no real friends, but when new neighbours move in, he starts talking to the girl who's now lives next door, and a friendship develops between them. But the little girl is not very normal.

I'd known there was a film of this; I knew it was a vampire book, that it had been well reviewed, and compared with Stephen King, so I had high hopes. The audiobook was on the shelf at the library.

Oskar, the "hero" of the book, is not very likeable: I'd assumed this would be a story where you'd feel really sorry for him, and be rooting for him to make friends with the girl and find someone who properly appreciates him. But he's not particularly sympathetic - he's a bit of a delinquent: shoplifting and being mean to his mum and his schoolmates: I suppose that's arguably a good thing in that it's not just cliched writing, but it seemed a bit odd not to be very bothered about what happened to him.

As well as the Oskar plot, there were a couple of other storylines, following other groups of people who are attacked by Eli, the girl vampire. Some of this was a bit interesting, but it was all fairly drawn out and so I didn't feel gripped by it at all.

I had expected the book to be a bit frightening, but most of it was a bit boring - only a couple of mildly creepy bits. Except for the story having some similarities with Salem's Lot, i.e. vampires turning up in a contemporary world, it was not at all like King's writing - not as good.

I anticipated what the end of the story would be, and it pretty much turned out the way I'd expected. All in all a bit of a letdown: the main affect it had was to make me want to read Salem's Lot.

Completed : 04-Jun-2015 (audiobook)