Friday 5 April 2013

Switched



My Sister the Vampire: Switched
Sienna Mercer
London, Edgmont, 2009, 247p

 Considering my initial expectations, I rather enjoyed this novel. Taking advantage of the current trend of vampire stories, Sienna Mercer has merged the supernatural with a sort-of Parent Trap story to make something cute and fun.

Switched is the first in the My Sister The Vampire series. At it's core, it is a rather normal high school tale of friendship. Ivy and Olivia are long-lost sisters, one of whom is a Goth, whilst the other wants to join the cheerleading squad. They decide to play a prank of captain cheerleader, Charlotte,  by switching clothes so Gothic Ivy can pretend to be Olivia at lunch. When they realise that no one had noticed the switch, they continue to use their new found sisterhood for dates and party-planning.

The story is not complex or clever - it is rather obvious, and if anything, I kept expecting a twist. But nothing really goes wrong for these girls. This series is just a new approach to girly junior fiction.

I guess the twist, if you can call it that, is that Ivy is a vampire. In this story, vampires are merged into normal society, able to survive daylight with a little sun lotion. At this point in the series, this element of the plot is not particularly significant, but I suspect that it might become more so.

An easy read and completely harmless, I found this novel to be better than I had anticipated, which can't be a bad thing.   

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