Review of "The Unlife of Lisa Cooper" by JM Celi

Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)

The Unlife of Lisa Cooper is one of the most entertaining and fun vampire novels we've read in a long time!

This JM Celi novel is split into "Episodes" rather than chapters, implying that the author may have aspirations of turning this into a supernatural or paranormal TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Grimm. The book shares a lot of similarities with these shows—blurring the lines between darker genres like paranormal romance, magical realism, and Gothic fantasy in conjunction with lighter genres like comedy, self-referential humor, and urban slice-of-life drama. The result is a narrative that’s as emotionally grounded as it is supernatural, inviting readers to connect with Lisa as both an immortal and a deeply human protagonist.

And, let's face it... vampires and werewolves are pretty darn silly. They've been done to death in fiction, and no matter how hard authors try to make their struggles and experiences gritty and realistic, there's always a part of us that finds them hard to take seriously.

What's incredible is that the author seems to acknowledge and realize this, crafting characters and a book that seem aware that they're pretty ridiculous and that they're in some pretty silly situations!

So, even though this book is a bit violent, it's also comically so. It's a lot more like Looney Tunes than Saving Private Ryan. The author may not like hearing that, but we mean that in the most positive and flattering possible way.

Let's put it this way: most of these Gothic fantasy-type novels tend to be dark and dreary affairs—depressing ones. They really get your mood down.

This book, on the other hand, is FUN, HUMOROUS, and—dare we say—ENTERTAINING and ENJOYABLE TO READ!

Who would've thought that a book can be entertaining and enjoyable?

Geez, it's like authors forget that books primarily exist to express, educate, and entertain.

Some authors seem to want to go out of their way to make the reading experience as miserable for the reader as possible. That's no fun!

Well, JM Celi, the author of The Unlife of Lisa Cooper, doesn't go that route. And we applaud the author for it.

So, what makes this book so fun, entertaining, and enjoyable? Well, as we alluded to before, it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Yes, there are stakes. Yes, there is some wear and tear. Yes, there is bloodshed. But it never seems like this book is celebrating or glorifying the violence. It more so offers explanations for why it's happening.

Because the book doesn't take itself too seriously, we're free to immerse ourselves in it without fear of permanent consequence or something irreversibly disastrous happening to beloved characters or plotlines. It frees and liberates us just to grab our pop corn, relax, and enjoy the ride that JM Celi is taking us on.

You know what? It's almost like a video game. It's almost like a session of Grand Theft Auto. Yes, your character might do all these terrible things and all these terrible things might happen to your character, but it's all fine and dandy. You can just load up your last save point or respawn outside the police station. It's kind of a surreal feeling.

So, let's actually talk about the nitty gritties of the book itself and try to uncover what made us feel this way about it.

The book follows the titular Lisa Cooper, who is cursed as a vampire and forced to periodically feed on people, all the while experiencing the guilt and despair of doing so. Apparently, she's about 100 or 150 years old—which actually lends to some of the humor in the book. One of the funniest scenes we can recall is when she bemoans having trouble driving even after doing it for over a hundred years.

For some reason, we thought Lisa Cooper was going to be the main villain of the book. We thought this book was going to be about a bunch of vampire hunters all trying to get her like she's Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back. We thought that the opening—in which she seduces and feeds on a man—was trying to establish that she's a dangerous killer/murderer and that she needs to be stopped.

Well, we were thankfully wrong. Lisa Cooper, in fact, is the protagonist and heroine of the novel despite the terrible and tragic things she must periodically engage in. She isn't evil, she's just hangry (hungry-angry). Aren't you sometimes?

That makes her surprisingly relatable.

The book does an awesome job at describing and demonstrating what happens when Lisa doesn't feed. They're like the worst withdrawal symptoms imaginable. It's hard not to feel for her and empathize with her.

We're actually told that—in this lore—vampires can die if they lose all of their blood. They don't have to eat the foods we humans normally eat or breathe air like humans do, but they do so to fit in and out of instinct. That's interesting.

There is a funny scene in which Lisa is so hungry and blood-starved that she resorts to eating hamburgers and strawberries her boyfriend bought for her, all the while essentially fantasizing and feeling bad about wanting to eat him. Gosh, that whole dynamic between her and Neil is the funniest thing about this whole book! We'll get back to that later.

Anyway, she gets incredibly dizzy and shaky when she hasn't fed on human blood in a while. We get these incredible descriptions of the way that Lisa feels throughout the book, not just when she hasn't fed but when she's being attack, assaulted, or when she's fighting off the various enemies in the book. The author did a great job at showing the character's wear and tear:

"...my anxiety weighed on me like an anvil on my chest."

"I was awash with fury and fear, and it was a cocktail ripe for my curse to pull
on. It almost begged me, dangling all the power I needed. All I had to do was take it, to drift down that dark spiral, and eviscerate every last one..."

“My complexion was definitely pale. My fingers felt cold. Granted, I didn’t look as pale as Tracy or some of the others who regularly draw on their curse, but I was noticeably less rosy."

"My hunger pulled on me like a tug-of-war. It would be so easy. We’d been so friendly with each other. The charming gaze would be effortless. My fangs elongated in my mouth. I held my lips tight... The curse compelled a vampire to do terrible things, but ultimately, it was our choices that made us what we were. And I chose not to let my curse control me."

"I was pushing the bullets out, slowly. Everything inside me was knitting itself back together. Pain still coursed through me, but the telltale pull of flesh mending to flesh put relief on the horizon.
Pierce put pressure on my wounds. I knew he was trying to control the bleeding, but I wanted him to knock it off. The added pressure just exasperated the entire ordeal."

"There was a bonfire in my abdomen. Scorching, pulsing waves of pain stabbed through me. I gritted my teeth. I could feel my body working to heal itself, but there was a lot of damage."

Lisa Cooper is such a cool character! Such a bad@#$ who is so hard to kill and yet... so vulnerable at the same time.

The fact that she's constantly at war with her curse and her conscience gives her depth. The fact that she's constantly in mental and physical anguish and pain makes us really sympathize and feel for her.

Also, despite having a vampiric curse and some enhanced abilities—especially her enchanting glance (which is somewhat Medusa-like/Jedi-mind-trick-like)--she feels the need to come armed with both a Remington and her shillelagh, which she feels the need to use to avoid alerting people by firing her gun. She also occasionally uses stakes, but usually just to contain or suppress the threats posed by other vampires, usually not to kill. On that note: Lisa is rather merciful. She has opportunities to outright kill a bunch of her enemies and just doesn't, feeling content to send a message not to screw with her again.

You know what else makes us love Lisa? It's that she's good to other people (well, aside from the leachers she has to feed on) and especially to animals!

In fact, one of her key relationships is with her dog, Chewie. Chewie is a humongous, lovable, and loyal Neapolitan Mastiff. Her relationship with Chewie is adorable and comical at times. Some of our favorite scenes in the book are just when he breaks the silence or awkwardness and "woofs" at things.

Lisa also demonstrates her kindness toward animals when she refuses to look at one of them being killed, even for food.
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Another really funny and entertaining relationship in this book is her relationship with Neil. In fact, it's probably our favorite thing about this book. Lisa has somehow kept her vampirism a secret from Neil, all the while all these crazy things are happening involving her that imply she's caught up in some supernatural/paranormal stuff.

So, what do Lisa and Neil do?
Well, Lisa creates white lies and Neil either buys into them or jumps to conclusions of his own.
Lisa somehow convinces Neil that Chewie is a magical dog that has sporatic invisibility powers.

Neil jumps to the conclusion that Lisa is a witch, and that's the story she decides to run with for most of the book. It's hilarious!

It's extra funny when Neil seems to have it all figured out. He's so sure that she's a witch and that all of these enemy covens are after her.

Ironically, despite Lisa not being a witch, she has to employ the assistance of witches in this book. Actually, her meeting with the witches was another of our favorite parts. It's cool how all the different witches was their own unique character with own unique perks and sets of skills.

Lisa also befriends Coyotita, a were-coywolf whose partner was killed by a mysterious and powerful assailant/force. The fact that she's a were-coywolf (of all things) sorta pokes fun at the genre as a whole. It also seems to poke fun at the fact that every vampire book just needs an obligatory werewolf character in it, whether it's relevant to the plot or not. It's just one of those tiresome tropes that just won't die.

Now, to be perfectly honest, this is around when the book seemed to lose focus and go a bit downhill. It's not that Coyotita wasn't cute and somewhat compelling, it's just that we thought the book was heading a certain direction, then got distracted with Coyotita's side-quest and the fire demon arc. Like, Neil pretty much disappears in this section of the book. We liked him! Why take him away from us?

Now, you could argue that the fire demon in this section somewhat intersects with the main story as it becomes entangled with the witches and Amy Wagner's murder mystery. Yes, this book joins the plethora of novels (as we joked about online) that arbitrarily devolved into a murder mystery.

However, it seemed like a side-tangent.

Hey, at least the fight with the fire demon is pretty cool and we get a huge dilemma with Coyotita.

Oh, and Brian is in this book, but we didn't care enough about him to remember who the heck he was or what he was doing in this book.

Anyway, getting back on track... the seeress among the witches, Andrea, tells Lisa that there are actually five different people/parties trying to kill her. By the way, it's really cool how even the seeress has rules she has to follow. She can only be asked three questions, so Lisa has to be economical with them.

Also, by the way, it's not like the other witches are just useless and don't do anything. Not only do they take part in battling the fire demon later, but they also have different functions in helping Andrea convey her prophecies (if you want to call her answers that). For example, Alice shuffles the tarot deck and Sophie translates.

Ok, we've yapped way too much about these doggone witches.

One last thing that's impressive about this book is the world-building. In this world, there are territories run by different vampires. These territories are called "Bleeds." You don't want to breach the territorial rights of these different Bleeds, but that's what naturally happens. Disputes emerge, and—as you'd expect—Lisa is caught up in the middle of them.

Also, there's the concept of "Thralls." From what we gather, Thralls are basically humans who become partnered with paranormal or supernatural creatures like vampires. We're assuming this probably extends to were-creatures too.

There are rules that vampires have to follow and rules that witches have to follow.
It's actually pretty interesting.

This has to be one of our favorite vampire novels ever because of how self-aware it seems to be. It knows what it is and doesn't try to force us to take it seriously. It's plain fun.

Check it out on Amazon!