Blog Tour: Drain You by M. Beth Bloom

I was so excited to be invited to be part of the Drain You Blog Tour and Giveaway, kicked off October 5 by Mundie Moms and Hobbitsies. I'm sure a lot of you remember that I loved this book. If you missed that post, never fear. Just keep reading.

The BOOK:

Drain You
by M. Beth Bloom
Published by HarperTeen
on July 24, 2012

Synopsis: Summer. The 90s. The rich, sun-bleached neighborhoods of the Los Angeles canyons. Enter Quinlan Lacey, a cool, bored, sarcastic, sexy 17-year old with a dull part-time video store job and a mild case of teen ennui. That is, until she meets the alluring, River Phoenix-esque James, and realizes the hills are alive with the undead. Inspired more by the early, dry L.A. short stories of Bret Easton Ellis than the current crop of serialized vampire fiction, the supernatural grunge romance, Drain You, narrates the headaches and heartbreaks Quinn undergoes in her quest to stay sane and cool and in love and alive.

Publisher's Weekly said:
Bloom debuts with a languid, stylish novel that reads like a love letter to cult vampire flicks like The Lost Boys, the work of Francesca Lia Block, and Southern California in the 1990s. 

You can read the full PW review here.

What Did I Think? Here's an excerpt from my July 16, 2012 review.

Quinlan "Quinn" Lacey is a 1990s L.A. princess, an only child who sulks her way through shifts at the video store and torments her co-worker Morgan with her skimpy outfits and her refusal to acknowledge his infatuation. She's spoiled and bored, the VJ of her own MTV universe. One night after work, she spots a classmate, Naomi Sheets, crying by the side of the road. But when she meets James, Naomi's mysterious brother, Quinn has finally met her match. He's frustratingly unavailable, enigmatically aloof. But no one denies Quinn anything, so she sets out to have him. She doesn't even care that he's part of a sinister world of the undead.

Drain You is a black comedy that wittily skewers overly permissive modern parenting, 80s slasher movies, and girl-meets-vampire stories, among other things.

Main character Quinn is quite the piece of work. She's gloriously self-centered, eager to keep Morgan slavering over her while simultaneously wrapping vampire James and his non-vamp brother Whit around her little finger. Quinn's relationship issues may not be entirely her fault -- her affluent parents raise her with benign neglect, communicating with her through cheery, passive-aggressive little notes as they social-climb their way through the L.A. party scene. 

I enjoyed Drain You so much that I didn't even need a plot, but there is one involving a pair of evil vampire twins, hilariously nicknamed "the Spaders" by Quinn. The Spaders are vampires by choice who enslave Quinn's best friend Libby, necessitating a somewhat farfetched kidnapping plot and a gruesomely comic scene involving drain cleaner that comes straight out of Heathers. I loved Drain You -- I could have read it forever!

To read the full review, including my 90s Glossary for the Tragically Young, click here.

Below, enter to win some fantastic themed prizes, including:

Signed copies of Drain You and signed bookmarks

$50 credit at Wasteland, Quinn's favorite store

Pages from Quinn's notebook (above)

90s mixtapes -- remember those!?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Author: 

Bloom's first short story “Love And Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape” was featured in Story Quarterly and selected by Dave Eggers for inclusion in The Best American Nonrequired Reading: 2003 (Houghton-Mifflin), which he curates annually. Bloom is the founder of underground dance label 100% Silk (profiled here in LA Weekly) AND the producer/lead singer of the band LA Vampires (written up in The Guardian as well as Pitchfork and Fader). Her next book will be published through HarperTeen.

Have you read this book since I told you I liked it? If not, here's your chance. I'll also be giving away an additional copy of Drain You as part of my I Love the 90s feature next week!