Audio Book REVIEW: Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors

Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors 

by Molly Harper

Narrator by Amanda Ronconi

Series: Jane Jameson #4

Published February 28th 2012 by Audible, Inc.

Just as Jane Jameson’s unlife seems to be stabilizing, fate sinks its fangs firmly into her butt. Despite her near-phobia of all things marital, her no-frills nighttime nuptials to her sexy boyfriend Gabriel are coming along smoothly. But the road to wedded bliss gets bumpy when a teenage acquaintance is fatally wounded in front of Jane’s shop and she turns him to save his life. The Council pronounces Jane responsible for the newborn vamp until he can control his thirst.

Jane’s kitchen at River Oaks barely holds enough Faux Type O to satiate the cute teen’s appetite and maintain Gabriel’s jealous streak at a slow simmer. As if keeping her hyperactive childe from sucking the blood out of the entire neighborhood isn’t enough to deal with, the persnickety ghost of Jane’s newly deceased Grandma Ruthie has declared a war on the fanged residents of River Oaks. Suddenly, choosing monogrammed cocktail napkins and a cake that she can’t eat seems downright relaxing in comparison.

Tensions inside the house are growing…and outside, a sinister force is aiming a stake straight for the center of Gabriel’s heart. Most brides just have to worry about choosing the right dress, but Jane fears that at this rate, she’ll never make it down the aisle for the wedding all nice girls dream of…

Molly Harper never fails to bring the snark and a pinch of sexy to her loveable characters. So I was excited to jump into another light and fun read with Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors.

Jane and the group are back for another fun filled mystery. This time around Jane is dealing with her own wedding planning issues, more dead relatives, and being a new mother so to speak.

Seems that someone always wants to kill or at least maim Jane. And she usually makes things worse by running off by herself to solve the mystery of who it is. But this time Jane is showing her maturity by letting her friends do the heavy lifting in the department of who wants Jane dead.

Dick nodded. "I was thinking official 'Keep Jane from Being Murdered Task Force' T-shirts.”

Jane gets to see how life is as a sire when she helps out a follow Half Moon Hollow citizen. And it’s funny as hell to see her and the gang deal with the new member to the family.

At some point, your child may challenge you to a fight. Try not to beat the childe too badly. Imagine having your mother knock you into unconsciousness. It would be emotionally scarring on several levels.
- Siring for the Stupid: A beginner's Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires

So if you are a fan of the series you will want to pick this one up if you have not already. And if you have not started the series I recommended to anyone that likes a fun paranormal light read with laughs on just about every page.

Audio Book REVIEW: Nice Girls Don't Live Forever

Nice Girls Don't Live Forever 
(Jane Jameson #3)
by Molly Harper
Narrator: Amanda Ronconi
RATING:★★★★

Nothing sucks the romance out of world travel like a boyfriend who may or may not have broken up with you in a hotel room in Brussels. Jane Jameson's sexy sire Gabriel has always been unpredictable, but the seductive, anonymous notes that await him at each stop of their international vacation, coupled with his evasive behavior over the past few months, finally push Jane onto the next flight home to Half Moon Hollow -- alone, upset, and unsure whether Gabriel just ended their relationship without actually telling her.
Now the children's-librarian-turned-vampire is reviving with plenty of Faux Type O, some TLC from her colorful friends and family, and her plans for a Brave New Jane. Step One: Get her newly renovated occult bookstore off the ground. Step Two: Support her best friend, Zeb, and his werewolf bride as they prepare for the impending birth of their baby...or litter. Step Three: Figure out who's been sending her threatening letters, and how her hostile pen pal is tied to Gabriel. Because for this nice girl, surviving a broken heart is suddenly becoming a matter of life and undeath.

REVIEW:

I am really enjoying this series; each book gets funnier and funnier. There is just enough mystery to the plots to keep you reading/listening to see who the bad guy is in each book. After reading a lot of darker books lately it’s nice to take a step back and enjoy the lightness of Harper’s world she has created in the Nice Girls series.
 
Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever picks up not long after Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men ended. Jolene and Zeb are married and expecting a baby. Jane and Gabriel are still having some relationship issues. And we get a good healthy dose of my favorite character in the series, Dick.

Were as each chapter in Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men started with a witty quote from the book about this one has golden nuggets of wisdom from Love Bites: A Female Vampire Guide to Less Destructive Relationship.

This series has plenty of pop culture digs but I LOVE, LOVE, the reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how Jane thought about finding James Marsters (aka Spike) and making him her love monkey. Come if vampires were real wouldn't we all hunt down our favorite vamp actor and turn him.

"Mmm. I wonder if it would be unethical for me to turn James Marsters and then force him to fake the accent and then make him my love monkey?"

The book starts out with Jane and Gabriel on vacation in Europe but it's not as fun or romantic as it sounds. After some mishaps, they return home and the weirdness that is Jane's life gets into full swing. There is ongoing problems with family members and some new adventures for Jane and a group of Stepford Wives that run the Chamber of Commerce in Half Moon Hollow.

Much like the other books in the series, I would highly recommend Nice Girls Don't Live Forever to anyone that is a fan of snarky light reads about a vamp chick that is just trying to adjusted to her new undead life.

Forbidden Thrust, Blood Lust, Penetrating Fangs, The Mis-Adventures of Milly..... "More things were being inserted than fangs.....  This is porn, vampire porn but porn all the same."

I can't wait for Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors to come out February 28, 2012. I've got it on my Audible.com wishlist.

Nice Girls Don't Live Forever is available at:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible.com

Audio Book Review: Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men 
(Jane Jameson #2)
by Molly Harper
Narrator: Amanda Ronconi
RATING:★★★ 1/2
Once a devoted children's librarian, Jane Jameson now works at a rundown occult bookstore. Once a regular gal, she's now a vampire. And instead of a bride, she's an eternal bridesmaid -- which leads her to question where exactly her relationship with her irresistibly sexy sire, Gabriel, is headed. Mercurial, enigmatic, apparently commitment-phobic vampires are nothing if not hard to read. While Jane is trying to master undead dating, she is also donning the ugliest bridesmaid's dress in history at her best friend Zeb's Titanic-themed wedding. Between a freaked-out groom-to-be, his hostile werewolf in-laws, and Zeb's mother, hell-bent on seeing Jane walk the aisle with Zeb, Jane's got the feeling she's just rearranging the proverbial deck chairs.
Meanwhile, Half Moon Hollow's own Black Widow, Jane's Grandma Ruthie, has met her match in her latest fiance. He smells like bad cheese and has a suspicious history of dead spouses. But Jane's biting her tongue. After all, would a nice girl really think she has a future with a vampire?

REVIEW:

I've read a lot of vampire books, some dark, some smut filled and it's nice to read and it’s nice to take a break from some of the darker Urban Fantasy ones to enjoy a light funny read. With vampires are named Dick Cheney (not the ex-vice prez) how can it not make you laugh.

In this installment of the series the gang deals with Zeb and Jolene’s wedding. Let me just say if I had a family that was as nosey as Jane, Zeb and Jolene’s I would have moved or gone to jail for killing a few of them. It actually got to the point to where it got a little annoying. I kept thing that all three of them needed to grow a part of balls and stand up to their families.

Each chapter starts with a saying from the book “Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were”. This helps set the mood for the wedding horrors for that following chapter.

Zeb starts acting weird halfway through the book but I quickly figure out what’s going on and wait to see how long it takes our main characters to get on board with the answer to WTH is wrong with him. Another character starts acting a bit like a stalker towards Jane is her high school crush, Adam. First he comes off sweet and seems to have taken a real liking to Jane the adult when he didn’t give Jane the teenager a second thought. Just when you think there might be a love triangle starting it ends when Jane uses her very spotty mind reading trick.

Jane and Gabriel’s relationship is far from perfect and things start to get even rockier towards the end of the book which leaves a lot of unanswered questions for Jane. But I’ve already started the 3rd book and it seems that the relationship problems that start in Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men are the setup for the main plot for Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever.

So in a nut shell NGDDD is about horrors of everything that surrounds planning a wedding and having to wear the ugliest braids maid dress and the ups and downs of relationships; plus controlling yourself enough to keep from killing your family.

Make sure you checkout my review for book 1, Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs.

Audiobook Review: Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs 
(Jane Jameson #1)
by Molly Harper 
Amanda Ronconi (Narrator)
RATING: ★★★ 1/2

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She's forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn't enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What's a nice undead girl to do?

REVIEW:

I've had this series on my TBR list for awhile and after reading How to Flirt With a Naked Werewolf by Harper I knew that I had to move this series up my reading list. Then my lovely husband got me a 12 months membership to Audible.com for my birthday, so Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs was my 1st "purchase".

I love the sarcastic humor that Harper uses in her books. Nice Girls is a fun light hearted read with mystery and romance set in the South were vamps are out to the public. Jane is turned in order to save her life but she does an excellent job of adapting to her new life. Plus it doesn't hurt that her sire is the yummy Gabriel.

Nice Girls reminded me of a mix between Undead Series by Davidson, Broken Heart Series by Bardsley and a touch of Sookie Stackhouse with the mention of fake bottled blood.

Not only did I enjoy the characters and plot line; but I found the narrator fun to listen to. She did the southern accent justice. And with me being from Arkansas, I've heard some really bad fake southern accents before. She didn't sound like Forrest Gump while reading the book. She added the extra twang when needed without over doing it.

I'm looking forward to downloading the rest of the series. Look for my reviews of more Molly Harper books in the near future.

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs is available at:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible.com