Bowie Sucks
By Karmellah Howlett
2022 Amazon KDP
Paperback, 149 pages
I’ll admit that I have never read an R.L. Stine, Caroline Cooney or Christopher Pike “young adult horror” book. That stuff came about when I was in my 20s and 30s and I had no interest in them at the time. That said, I went into this new book while in my early 60s and had a lot of fun with it. But wait a minute… I (mostly) love David Bowie! What the…
Well, Bowie Gleason’s folks love David Bowie more than most, in fact they named their daughter Bowie. Unfortunately for her, she was vampirized which adds quite a lot to her teen angst. Now, she not only has boy problems and high school, but she has to keep secrets from her friends and father. And then there’s the bloodlust thing. All that and the vampire who turned her keeps interfering in her (un)life and following her, trying to guide her. What will her close friends think of her when they discover her situation?
Told in first person, you can really hear a flustered but funny teenage girl telling the story. Bowie accepts her dilemma and still carries on with her school and life, fake eating while craving blood, falling for a boy that she will outlive by hundreds of years. Poor Bowie does not have it easy! She addresses the reader in a fun “if anyone actually reads this” kind of way. The evil phantom of most self-published books, punctuation miscues, actually work in the favor of Bowie’s squirrely teenage narration.
If you’re thinking “Buffy”, well you might be right. The characters even refer to it in an amusing manner a few times. The relationship between Bowie and her father is refreshingly close and loving, too, especially as she realizes that she will watch him grow old and die while she remains 16.
This is listed as #1 in Howlett’s Crypteen series (which is a great name) but as of this writing (January 2025) another entry hasn’t materialized. I’m inclined to keep an eye out for future Crypteens! Bowie Sucks sports a clever cover courtesy of Ashley Greathouse.
