Undead and Undermined (Queen Betsy/Undead Book 10) by Maryjanice Davidson
I've really quite enjoyed this series though began to have doubts when I read the ninth book, Undead and Unfinished, though it didn't quite come into the fail category. This 2011 offering did though.
I won't go into any long explanation about the series, it is easy enough to Google it. Basically it has been a light-weight paranormal romance with a vampire queen narrator/lead character who is something of an airhead with a passion for shoes.
In her Epigraph to this tenth book Davidson introduced me to a new phrase: retroactive continuity (retcon) and quoted its Wiki entry: "Refers to the deliberate alteration of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction." My immediate thought was that this didn't bode well.
.Basically in Undead and Unfinished, which Davidson had said was the start of a new three-book story arc, Betsy and half-sister Laura had undertaken a romp through time with the result that they came home to an altered reality. This tenth book is for the most part taken up with Betsy reacting to these timey-whimy shenanigans with a lot of back story exposition and an attendant paper-thin plot. I had already been disappointed in the direction the new arc was heading and this second book was worse, even if slightly redeemed by its final pages and an expected event.
Aside from what felt like 6+ hours of pointless faffing about, Betsy as a character exhibits a ridiculous immaturity in which she seriously values her shoes over friends. Such antics were mildly funny the first few times; like an extreme version of Sex and the City . Yet there friendship was always more important than the latest Christian Louboutin. Here Betsy seems to be regressing rather than maturing as a character including having a childish outburst of temper after discovering her divorced Mum has a boyfriend.
Pretty much all the reviews I have read reflected this disappointment over the decline in what had been a charming series. I find myself in agreement with one reviewer who suggested that if MJD had wanted to write a darker slice of urban fantasy/paranormal romance she would have been better served by retiring Betsy and coming up with a new set of characters rather than taking the series in this new direction. I did pay a visit to MJD's blog where she was extremely defensive over the 1 & 2-star reviews she'd received for Book 9 and whipping up her fans against such horrid people. Seriously? I almost imagine her sticking out her lower lip and pouting when she reads what folk are saying about this one.
Anyway, I am happy to stand by my reviews and in my opinion what has been a fun and fluffy series of vampire chick-lit has 'jumped the shark'.
However, one thing that did come out of this was for me to forgive L.J. Smith for shifting her Vampire Diaries setting from the early 1990s to the current day as it seemed a rather minor retcon in contrast to this mess.