Big Vamp on Campus (Half-Moon Hollow, #9.5)

by Molly Harper

In Molly Harper’s newest paranormal romantic comedy set in her beloved Half Moon Hollow, a vampire princess must learn how to navigate life as a college student—including living with her messy, annoying, frustrating new roommate.

Ophelia Lambert, four-hundred-year-old vampire princessand college freshman, suddenly finds herself domesticated by humans and forced to suffer the indignities of dorm rooms, communal bathrooms, and a roommate with sticky fingers.

As one of the hundreds of undead venturing into post-secondary education, Ophelia has a lot more to learn that just “undead studies”—she has to learn to get along with her fellow vampire classmates and worst of all, her human ones, along with getting back into the good graces of the World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead.

Can this once all-powerful vampire princess balance classes and campus life with romance, human- and vampire relations, and not sinking her teeth into her annoying roommate? With her “distinct, captivating style,” (RT Book Reviews) Molly Harper demonstrates that she is one of the best voices in paranormal romance.

• ISBN10: 1476794553
• ISBN13: 9781476794556
• Publish Date: 6 June 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Pocket Star
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 112
• Language: English

Reviews

[Melanie]

My review and an extended sample of the audiobook are posted at Hotlistens.com.

This is the newest book in the Half Moon Hollow series. It is a novella, so it is pretty short at only about two and a half hours long. Authors are going to hate me for this, but if I’m already reading a series, I don’t read the blurbs that are provided. I just don’t. I like to go into a book blind with little idea of what is going to happen. So, going into this book, I thought the book was going to focus mostly on Jamie, since he is the vamp that is college aged. Well, I forgot all about Ophelia’s punishment. This book follows Ophelia and her time on campus. Now, that doesn’t mean that Jamie isn’t in it, of course he is, he just isn’t the focus of the story.

It was interesting seeing Ophelia having to deal with the fact that she isn’t all powerful any more. She had to follow the rules instead of creating them and punishing the ones who don’t. I enjoyed watching her learn how to actually make friends, something she has never done in the past.

The relationship with Jamie grows and she finally learns to be someone without him, which is the problem that got her here in the first place. She learns that she can have a life and he can have his while they both can still move together as a couple. She actually becomes a likable character. I’m interested to see where this relationship goes and where Ophelia goes now that she isn’t in charge of everything.

All in all, a cute, fun story that is everything you would expect from a Half Moon Hollow story and a must listen for all fans of the series. There spoilers in this story for an earlier book in the series, so I wouldn’t tackle this one unless you are up-to-date.

Narration
Amanda Ronconi continues to nail this series. I can’t help but wait for the audios because I feel she really brings out the snark in the stories. Molly Harper’s books are pretty strict audio only for me because of how much I love Ronconi’s narration. If you haven’t tried these books on audio, I highly recommend it.

**I like to thank the publisher for providing me with a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

[EBookObsessed]

I was a bit disappointed in this novella. Since we already knew the characters of Ophelia and Jamie, we should have jumped right in and gotten more out of this story. It ended up being more of a filler and a lead in to the next novel coming out in 2017 The Accidental Sire.

Big Vamp on Campus focuses on Jane Jamison-Nightengale’s “child” Jamie and his girlfriend, Ophelia, as they start their first term at the local college now that they are catering to undead students. We met Jamie in Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors when Jamie is the victim of a hit-and-run accident and Jane turns him into a vampire. We have watched the downfall of Ophelia from scariest member of the vampire Council to her disgrace in trying to get rid of Gigi.

Ophelia attempted to get rid of Gigi since Gigi is Jamie’s best friend and she was helping him apply to college and trying to take him away from Ophelia. Ophelia believes that Jamie is her “blood mate.”

The majority of the story focuses on how the stuffy and pompous Ophelia, who is used to having all the vampires bow and scrape to her power, and how she deals with life as a freshman nobody in a dorm situation. Freshman must live in the dorms and share a room so her money and connections won’t get her anywhere. It is also a mixed human-vampire dorm and Ophelia hasn’t spent time with humans in a century or so. So we gradually see the rehumanization of Ophelia as she adjusts to dorm life and meets some human girls. We also see her Skype with her little (psycho) sister, Georgie, who is being forced into a period of a second childhood by Jane who has taken her in while Ophelia is in school and is treating her like any child of her physical age.

While I say it focuses on Jamie and Ophelia, in truth Jamie doesn’t make it into too much of the book. He is spending a good deal of his time with his new dorm mates playing video games. I wasn’t sure as I was reading this whether or not Ophelia was going to realize that her obsessive focus on Jamie was based on the fact that she hadn’t spent much time around other attractive vampires her own age. While Jamie is playing video games, there is another student in Ophelia’s class, who is considered a vampire hipster, who prefers going to museums and concerts, things that seem to be of more interest to Ophelia. Would she finally realize that she and Jamie weren’t really blood mates and that she was obsessing over the only attractive male in her physical-age bracket?

While the story seemed to be going that way, we suddenly curve back to Jamie and the new flirty hipster disappears into the background. To me it seemed a bit jerky that this sudden contemplation by Ophelia whether or not she wanted to go out with this hipster-vamp is quickly aborted and she is suddenly back in Jamie’s arms having sex. It is one of the human girls who warns her off hipster-vamp and maybe it was simply a set up so Ophelia can have human girlfriends? Not sure yet.

For fans of the series, it is a quick read and there are tiny plot points to note which I am sure will be part of the next story. How many other hints are in there, we won’t know until the next book comes out.

In the end, we don’t exactly watch Ophelia mellow out, but we do see her realize that there is more to the humans than she gives them credit for and she starts to open up to having some girl friend time and loosening her nervous grasp on Jamie.

In the end, this novella is just like I’m Dreaming of an Undead Christmas. Rather than standing on its own, it ends as more of a lead in for the next book which will feature two other students from the college, Gigi’s ex-boyfriend and one of the human girls that Ophelia befriends.