A disabled vampire who runs a pet boutique? Impossible. Unless, of course, everything you've been told about vampires is a lie…

You'd think Arteria Falls, Colorado would be riddled with dead bodies considering its vampire population, but Josie and her fellow vampires live peacefully in their little hidden town. Josie is just an average resident running a pet boutique while managing her disability until her best customer is murdered…in her friend’s bakery.

Stunned to hear that the kindhearted baker is now the prime suspect in the murder, Josie must resurrect the investigation skills she acquired while working for her grandfather’s P.I. business to help clear her friend’s name. But as she unravels the web of lies and secrets woven around the victim, it becomes clear a killer more devious than Dracula himself is on the loose. Josie fears her pained joints might give up before she can stop them.

With more suspects on the list than Josie has working joints, can Arteria Falls’ only P.I. catch the killer before they claim another victim?

If you like cozy towns, vivacious vampires, and charming canine companions, then you'll love Elle Wren Burke’s fangtastic mystery.

Sharpen your fangs and buy A Fang to Remember today!

This book was provided for free by Book Sirens and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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I was looking forward to an urban fantasy novel with a protagonist with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), as it’s a condition I have myself; however, I ended up DNFing this book at twelve per cent. There were several issues with A Fang to Remember that caused me to stop reading the book. The author’s writing is very basic and is littered with grammar and spelling mistakes that an editor or beta reader should have picked up. Advanced reader copies (ARCs) may have some errors; however, by this point, they are expected to be fully edited. Book reviewers are not beta readers, and it is not our job to point out issues like this to the author. A Fang to Remember is also available on Kindle Unlimited, and I took a moment to compare it to my ARC; the copies are exactly the same, mistakes included, which is pretty embarrassing and very unprofessional.

The basic mistakes are compounded by Wren Burke’s overuse of a thesaurus, which, when used correctly, is a writer’s best friend. Unfortunately, in this book, it’s been used to just toss in flashy words to try and jazz things up, usually incorrectly or at inappropriate times.

Take, for example, in Chapter One, when Josie has just been on her feet helping a difficult customer and has to head out to an appointment. She’s in a lot of pain and has just missed a bus.

“One foot in front of the other, I started down the street, my long, blond hair sashaying behind me.”

First, no one outside a fashion show or a drag show actually “sashays”, and I’m sorry, but even if you’re filled with confidence, if you’re in that much chronic pain and using crutches, there is no way you’re sashaying anywhere. It’s a completely inappropriate word to use, especially when the next paragraph after this talks about struggling with pain. It’s completely at odds with the imagery that the author has just presented. As someone with multiple chronic health conditions, I’m here for representation, especially written by disabled people; however, representation needs to be realistic, and this just isn’t. I also felt that the author’s basic description of pain was very repetitive, with the same words being used to describe Josie’s symptoms. This may change over the course of the book, but it wasn’t just the author’s writing that put me off.

A Fang to Remember is supposed to be a vampire novel, and I personally love it when authors create new vampire mythos. The problem is that in this case, the author has skimped on world-building. Just like their writing and editing, their world-building is very lazy. In the universe of A Fang to Remember, while vampires do need to drink blood, they do not have supernatural strength or speed, they are not immortal, and they can go out during the day. As Josie explains, blood is the main calorie source for these “vampires”, and they are allergic to “almost everything else” except “chocolate, coconut, dates, prunes, coffee, citrus, teas, wine, pickles, olives and seaweed … if eaten correctly”.

Essentially, Wren Burke has created her own unique species, which would be very interesting except for the fact that she’s trying to pass it off as a type of vampire when the only similarity between this species and vampires is blood drinking. Personally, that isn’t enough for me to call this a vampire novel,l especially when Wren Burke offers no further world-building for the species she has created. Why can her vampires only eat certain foods? No idea! It seems like the author opened a cookbook and chose ingredients at random.

She’s very quick to mock Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and her sparkly vampires, and no matter how silly the idea of sparkly vampires may sound, Meyer’s world-building is solid. She gives good reasoning and explanation for why her vampires have to avoid the sun, and she sticks to various other core tenets of the vampire mythos while also making it her own. It’s really not a good look to call out another author when your own world-building is so poorly constructed.

The icing on the cake was the fact that Josie and her fellow characters are living in a small town just for vampires that appears to double as a vampire-themed amusement park. The main street is called “Vein Street”, the waterfalls are called “Arteria Falls”, and of course, it wouldn’t be perfectly stereotypical without the completely mortal American vampire cursing “who in the bloody bite” after receiving a badly written cryptic poem. That was the point where I finally gave up on this one. I guess the “fangtastic mystery” comment in the synopsis probably should have given me an idea of the level of cringe that I was letting myself in for, but I was hoping that I could overlook it in favour of a book with a disabled protagonist written by a disabled author. No such luck.

Just a reminder to non-disabled readers, because apparently it needs to be said again: your opinion on the word disabled is completely irrelevant. When discussing disabled people or characters, the term you should be using is disabled whether you like the word or not. There’s a review for this book on Goodreads where a reviewer uses the word “dis-capable” because they “dislike” the word disable,d and this is extremely insulting. Using alternatives like this is not respectful; it implies that there is something wrong with being disabled. The only people who have the right to use an alternative word for disabled/disability are those of us who are disabled, and if a disabled person has a personal preference, they will personally let you know (I personally use disabled, chronically ill or “spoonie” interchangeably).

I can tell that the person who left the review is not disabled because “dis-capable” is a typically ableist alternative, as it heavily implies that there is something wrong with the word disabled. Also, a disabled person who disliked the word disabled would have most likely used an alternative such as spoonie, chronically ill or reclaimed crip/pled that was not offensive. I would have quite happily called out the reviewer on their review; however, they have their comments set to friends only. Instead, I’m making the point here and hoping to educate others at the same time.

Thank you for reading my review for A Fang to Remember by Elle Wren Burke.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!

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