THIRSTY

Charlie Wever is a down-on-his-luck advice columnist who doesn’t have the answers about dating magical creatures. Can a chance run-in with a vampire acquaintance be his ticket back to the top?

When the online magazine Charlie writes for is bought out, his salary is replaced by a pay-per-click rate, and he’s forced to move from New York back to his hometown in rural Virginia. Luckily, he soon runs into Lorenzo, who dated one of his college friends until she dumped him—on Charlie’s advice. When Charlie asks Lorenzo to be his guide to the world of supernatural creatures, Lorenzo agrees because he sees the request as an opportunity for revenge. This dubious arrangement seems to benefit Charlie more than Lorenzo, who asks for Charlie’s help with a few mundane tasks involving a plumber, a dry cleaner, and a driver’s license. When Charlie complies, Lorenzo reciprocates by bringing him to a werewolf prom, a druid initiation ceremony, interspecies game nights, and more. Eventually Lorenzo moves past Charlie’s previous betrayal, and they act on their growing attraction to one another. Their plan begins with a fair amount of deception—rather than telling Lorenzo about his advice column, Charlie says he’s a graduate student working on a thesis that no one will ever read (hoping to placate the vampire sense of privacy), and Lorenzo invades Charlie’s sleeping subconscious to scare him away. Both of Charlie’s betrayals seem fairly manufactured, and it’s never clear why Charlie needs to lie about writing a column when there are other people publicly discussing intraspecies relationships and mystical creatures are a known population. Lorenzo’s supernatural roommates and Charlie’s letters from the paranormal lovelorn are the highlights of Lehane’s debut.

Ambitious and fun, but fails to find the right magic.