Wicked Game

Jeri Smith-Ready’s Wicked Game is a fun little vampire yarn with some interesting new twists. While some of those new twists bring on new thoughts that I might prefer never to have come up, others may enjoy them for what they are. Wicked Game tells the story of a small town radio station manned by vampires stuck in their respective ‘birth years’ and thus the experts on each era’s music. While they have a cozy gig at the station with an understanding boss and onsite apartments designed to protect them, their future with the station is on shaky ground with they find out it could be sold to a huge radio conglomerate famous for homogenizing their stations.

Ciara Griffin is a small time con artist looking to go legitimate with a regular job. When she hears about an internship at the local radio station, she’s all for it. But she isn’t yet aware that the famous DJs are actually vampires and that her internship might be a little more exciting than she expected. Getting through the interview, while horribly dreaded and sweated through, winds up being the easiest part of the job. Ciara soon learns that WMMP’s revenues must go up by a large percent in a short period of time in order to keep the radio station going as it is. Her resulting mad dash to increase revenues creates some wonderful publicity, a load of new listeners and a media storm that causes more problems than it solves.

This book is definitely a fun and interesting twist on the urban vampire tale that has become so popular these days. Expect adult situations, blood, death and a healthy seasoning of cheesy puns for a light stew fit for an enjoyable evening spent on the couch at leisure.