Review – Wicked Game (WVMP, Book 1) by Jeri Smith-Ready (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 361 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books
Release Date: May 13, 2008
ISBN-13:978-1416551768
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the WVMP series
Source: Won
Rating: 3/5 stars

I have had this urban fantasy series to read for some time. There are four books in this series. It ended up being an okay vampire urban fantasy read. There are some interesting aspects to the vampires in this book that are new and interesting. I thought the characters were okay but not great. Additionally the plot was a mystery of sorts and again was okay but not great.

Ciara is an ex-con artist trying to stay on the straight and narrow. She ends up taking a job as a marketing intern at the WMMP radio station which it known for it’s authentic 40’s, 80’s, and 90’s rock hours. Shortly into her new job she finds out that the shows are so authentic because they are run by vampires from those eras. These vampires get kind of stuck in the era they died and the radio station provides them something to latch onto and preserves their sanity.

Ciara is shocked and her first instinct is to run, but then she finds out WMMP is under the threat of being bought out by the big corporate conglomeration called Skywave. So Ciara comes up with the idea to actually tout to the world that these DJs are vampires and save the radio station. However things go horribly wrong when some ancient vampires object to this vampire coming out.

This was a decent urban fantasy featuring music and vampires; however I wasn’t absolutely captured by the world, characters or story. I kind of felt like everything was just okay. Ciara is an okay character; I enjoyed her past as a con artist and how that comes into play in her new marketing job. She does make a lot of bad decisions throughout though and I didn’t really engage with her all that well as a character.

She ends up dating one of the vamps form the station named Shane. Shane is honestly pretty creepy and I never really liked or engaged with their relationship.

The other vampires at the station are okay as well but lacked depth. Same with the story it just felt a bit awkward and was hard to engage with.

Overall this is an okay urban fantasy but nothing that I was super excited about. There are some interesting ideas here but most of it is pretty typical UF. There’s a lot of great UF out there so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this series. I would recommend checking out the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire, the Jane Yellowrock series by Faith Hunter or the Steel and Stone series by Annette Marie instead. I don’t plan on reading future books in this series.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge