Mercedes Amberson is viewed by the other girls at Cooper Riding Academy as a poor little rich girl. She certainly feels alone, with parents who don't seem very interested in her. Her only friend is Andrea Burgess, who is poor, but has a loving family she misses.
What Mercy wants most of all is a boyfriend to call her own. She thinks she's found the one in Conner Egan, the lead singer of band Elysian Fields playing at the popular Night Owl club. Little does she know, Conner is actually a centuries-old vampire. He needs a young girl to pledge her undying love to him so that he may turn her into a vampire, allowing him to become mortal again. He thinks he's found the one in Mercy Amberson. It is up to Andrea to step in and save Mercedes from Conner's clutches.
Just when I think I've found the dumbest, most exasperating heroine in a novel ever, something always seems to come along and raise the bar even higher. The latest doozy is Mercedes "Mercy" Amberson, whose too-stupid-to-live behaviour really stretches patience. It is suggested that she is under some kind of spell that Conner has used to bend her to his will, but it did little to generate extra sympathy for her.
It also makes the plot confusing.
If Conner needs a young woman to tell him she'll love him forever and do anything to prove it so that he can turn her into a vampire and become mortal again himself - and has supernatural powers to hasten the wooing process along - why has it taken him over 200 years to find a wet blanket like Mercedes? He mentions he spent at least 100 of those years living like an animal because he was so angry at his vampire state, but that doesn't explain the other 100 years. What has he been doing in all that time? Tending to his garden? Penning the ten-thousand-or-so teen novels about vampire love that have been released in the last 20 years? He's certainly taken his sweet time. Maybe because only Mercedes was the only person in the last century who was enough of a dolt to fall for his bullshit. Who knows?
Conner believes that once he is mortal again, he can have whatever he wishes for the remainder of his life. What exactly is that? How would he achieve that? Will he gain a magic genie who grants those wishes once he's human? The novel doesn't explain why being mortal again is such an important goal for him, especially considering he has not been terribly proactive about the whole thing.
The character of Andrea Burgess is far more tolerable. She's plucky and strong-willed. Why on Earth she would expend so much energy and risk death several times to save a simpering moron like Mercedes is another question that remains unanswered.
Of course, I'm probably expecting too much from a 90s teen novel released when the market was being absolutely saturated by multiple clones. It doesn't stop me from hunting down every single one of them. And I do enjoy reading them. However, the ones involving sappy vampire love are generally the more dire of the lot, indicating that not a whole lot has changed since the early 90s vampire stuff and the Twilight-inspired dreck being released now.
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