What we're reading: You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Let's back up minute. From where? Well, here. I guess if I'm going to write a brief review of a sequel, I need to mention the original.

In Bloodsucking Fiends, we meet C Thomas Flood, a recent high school grad from Indiana who drives to San Francisco for romance and a writing career. His car burns to the ground the second he parks it in San Fran, and he winds up finding work as a night manager in a grocery store.

We also meet Jody, a 24-year-old professional hanger-on. She jumps from relationship to relationship for co-habitation purposes. Except this time, we meet Jody under a Dumpster, where an 800-year-old vampire has left her after he turned her into a, well, bloodsucking fiend, entirely against her will.

Short version: Jody and Tommy hook up, Tommy and his night crew find the old vampire and destroy his boat, and Tommy has both the old vampire and Jody bronzed while he thinks about what to do with them.

Thing is, he drills holes in bronzed Jody's ears so that she can hear him, and one night, while he's asleep, she turns to mist and seeps out of one of the holes.

And so we open You Suck with Jody having just turned Tommy into a vampire, quite against his will. "You killed me. You suck!" Tommy yells.

Moore's got himself a series of repeated characters – Rivera and Cavuto, detectives; the Emperor of San Francisco with his intrepid pooches; and he brings back Charlie Asher, Abby Normal and Lily from A Dirty Job.

Wait, let's back up again. You Suck wasn't an intended sequel. People liked Bloodsucking Fiends so much that they asked him for the sequel.

Now that's an author who's in touch with his fans.

The genius of You Suck isn't in Moore's storytelling – I've already expressed my love for his cheesy B-grade horror-romance fiction. The genius is in his writing of the Abby Normal character.

Abby is a 16-year-old caffeine-addicted anorexic goth chick who is in love with the idea of vampires. And Moore writes her narrative as a diary. And he nails the high-school-fantasy-romance-love-of-the-dark thing. Down to the flannel and the Chucks.

Also, this book includes a blue hooker, people who spend $600,000 on her (Eliot Spitzer, you got nothin'), a micturated-upon running suit, and a geeky Asian dude who builds floodlights into overcoats.

What more could you ask for?