My Sister the Vampire 9, 10, &11

We managed to get the next three My Sister the Vampire books through Scholastic, so we’re all caught up now! Rather than write three separate reviews, I’m going to do them all together.

I’m just going to assume you’re familiar with the series. If not, you can read about the earlier books here and here.

Note: These books seem to only be available in the U.S. through the Scholastic Book Club. Through Amazon, you have to order them from England and the names are different. For a list of the books and the links, see here.

Update: I’m finding at least most of them available on Kindle now. Yay!

Twin-Tastrophe (AKA Twin Spins)

As Ivy gets older, her powers are getting stronger. She needs to learn how to control her powers or she risks accidentally drawing attention to the existence of vampires. Her dad and grandparents encourage her to go to a special vampire school in Transylvania, but she’s not allowed to discuss it with Olivia. The main plot of this book is Olivia planning the school dance, while Ivy misses cues from everyone.

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SPOILER ALERT: Things you might want to know before suggesting this to your kid

Bullies

A couple of older girls crash Olivia’s dance planning committee. They’re social/emotional bullies primarily and Olivia needs to figure out how to deal with them and how to get her friend Jenny to stand up to them. There’s a suggestion that you should hit a bully back (whether a physical or emotional blow), which isn’t necessarily good advice. In the end, it turns out that Jenny just needed confidence and the older girls just needed a way to feel like they belonged. It’s all summed up just a little too neatly.

Charlotte isn’t one of the bullies. Her character is actually changing, which is welcome.

Secrets

Ivy isn’t supposed to tell Olivia about the special school and she doesn’t want to mention it to her boyfriend Brendon. She’s not used to keeping secrets from her sister and it really weighs on her. It doesn’t last long, though—Ivy can never keep a secret from Olivia for long, and luckily Olivia won’t blab about vampires. The secret is safe with her.

Boyfriends

Ivy and Brendon are having some issues getting along. She assumes he wouldn’t want to go to the stupid school dance, so she shoots him down every time he mentions it. She’s also kind of stressed out and distracted with her own issues. Ivy feels like disagreeing with Brendon is the same as arguing with him, so that adds to the tension.

Jackson isn’t really a character—his absences is just a reason for Olivia to throw herself into whatever’s going on around her.

Admitting When You’re Wrong

Both Ivy and Olivia royally screw some things up. Olivia realizes she needs to learn to say no and that she needs to trust other people to handle some situations. She can’t always be the problem solver. Ivy needs to stop projecting her own ideas onto other people. The great thing is that when the girls realize they’re messing things up, they work to fix it.

Bite Night (AKA Date with Destiny)

The twins head to Transylvania for the prince’s wedding. They have to deal with stuffy royal vampires and some inter-family drama. Ivy also needs to decide if she’s going to go to the vampire boarding school. A lot of characters from a few books back show up again. Any of the characters with a large enough role in the series tend to be fairly nuanced and complex for a series like this.

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SPOILER ALERT: Things you might want to know before suggesting this to your kid

Family

Family can be mighty embarrassing and occasionally downright annoying. Old friends fit into a similar category. However, if they’re truly well intentioned, it’s good to try to be tolerant and accepting.

Boyfriends

With Jackson on tour, communication has been frustrating and rare. They’ve decided to stop trying to talk for a while.

Olivia goes so far as asking everyone not to mention Jackson. At all. Ever. This gets annoying very quickly.

The girls keep matchmaking for everyone. It starts to get old, at least from my point of view. Not every character in the book needs a significant other!

Allergies

Olivia has an allergic reaction that closes up her throat and blocks her breathing. This is treated almost as a joke, which wasn’t a choice I would have made.

Be Yourself

As the girls are growing up, the book focuses on learning to be yourself and allowing yourself and those

around you to grow and change. The girls aren’t the same as when they first met, and that’s a good thing—even if it isn’t always easy.

Literary References

The book referred to Frankenstein’s monster, instead of calling the monster Frankenstein! This makes me happy.

Vampire School Dropout (AKA Flying Solo)

Ivy decides to give the vampire boarding school a chance, so she stays behind in Transylvania and the twins are apart for the first time since they met. She’s also away from Brendon, which is tough on both of them.

Olivia is dealing with things at home, which sometimes gets complicated. She can’t exactly tell people that Ivy is at a special boarding school for vampires.

SPOILER ALERT: Things you might want to know before suggesting this to your kid

Breakups

Olivia and Jackson amicably broke up in between the last book and this one. Olivia seems totally fine. To my mind, possibly TOO fine. Because Olivia doesn’t want to worry Ivy, she doesn’t tell her—Ivy finds out through the media which is all abuzz now that Jackson is single again. I’m glad they didn’t send Olivia into a depressive tail spin, because that wouldn’t be at all in keeping with the tone of these books. But Olivia’s relentlessly positive attitude would worry me if she were an actual person.

Rules

Ivy ends up breaking all kinds of rules at her new school. She doesn’t really fit in, although she does start making some friends. In the end, she leaves the school midway through the year. She says it might be her grandparents’ dream for her to go there, but it isn’t hers. This worries me as a parent, though—she might bail on the school, but her improving powers that she can’t quite control haven’t gone away. I hope she’ll find another way to learn to better control her powers!

Twin Stuff

When Olivia makes a new friend, she somehow doesn’t manage to explain that Ivy is away. When the friend wants to interview Ivy for a paper, Olivia decides to pretend to be Ivy. This leads to all kinds of weirdness, especially with Brendon because…

Energy Supplements

…Brendon has been eating Taurus energy bars (Taurus the bull? Get it? Ha!) and it turns out that he’s allergic to them. It’s slowly making him sick—he starts acting really strange, and when he sees Olivia dressed as Ivy, he gets really confused and thinks she really is Ivy.

Through Brendon’s reaction and Olivia’s obvious disdain for the supplement bars, the book makes a statement against kids consuming things like energy bars and energy drinks because you can’t be totally sure of how all those chemicals and stimulants might affect you.

Karate

Olivia’s dad, Mr. Abbott, apparently has the world’s worst karate instructor. Mr. Abbott is seen out in the backyard whacking away at a board that isn’t breaking. I’m no expert, but after occasionally watching my son who’s been taking tae kwon do for about a year, I know that’s terrible form. It bothered me because you don’t even have to do much research to know how amazingly wrong that is.

Recommendation

For the most part, this series continues to be cute and harmless. Vampire School Dropout wasn’t one of my favorites, but the others were just fine and I expect the series to get back on track with Ivy coming back home. My daughter continues to enjoy them and she starts at the beginning of the series each time she gets the next books. These are good for young readers and probably fun enough for some reluctant readers.

Twin-Tastrophe, Bite Night, and Vampire School Dropout by Sienna Mercer
Published in 2011, 2012, and 2012 by Working Partners Ltd.
Books 9, 10, and 11 of the My Sister the Vampire series

Note: These books seem to only be available in the U.S. through the Scholastic Book Club.

Update: I’m finding at least most of them available on Kindle now, frequently with their British titles. Yay!

9. Twin Spins (TwinTastrophe)

10. Date with Destiny (Bite Night)

11. Flying Solo (Vampire School Dropout)