Gemini Bites by Patrick Ryan

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

Overall, a cute, funny, not-so-serious story about two siblings fighting for a mysterious guy who might have supernatural abilities. Here’s a quote I liked:

“I stared out at the dark orange field surrounding us, and my heart was in my ears now, whump, whump, whump, and I had this totally moronic sequence of thoughts: Something gay is about to happen here. This spot will forevermore be the place where you had your first gay encounter. People will live here one day, in a nice big house, and never know they’re living on a sacred ground of gayness.”

Judy and Kyle Renneker, sixteen-year-old fraternal twins in a family of nine, have competed with one another throughout their lives. Judy has always been a jerk, and her latest scheme involves seducing an attractive, religious boy by pretending to be Christian. Kyle recently came out to his family and more or less desires a boyfriend. Things get shaken up when Garret Johnson, a strange and slightly vampiric guy their age, decides to reside in the attic of their house for a short amount of time.

Patrick Ryan could have taken Gemini Bites in many different directions. He could have made it a dark, serious story about a dangerously sexy vampire guy who takes over Kyle and Judy’s lives. Instead, he wrote a light, humorous book that didn’t reach deeply but still made me laugh. The relationship between Kyle and Garret was sweet, and Judy did grow by the end of the book.

However, there was room for further development. Garret’s character possessed much untapped potential, and the entire vampire plot line itself felt uncomfortably ambiguous. A lot of telling occurred, especially during the ending, and I am still curious about what happened to Coover (and why he did what he did in the first place.)

Recommended for those searching for a decent GLBT/vampire story, and for those who don’t mind a male/female split narrative. Here’s a more insightful quote that I marked:

“Of course, it had happened before. In school, for instance, just because a guy was a bully or a jerk, that didn’t change the fact that he was awesome looking. It should have. If there was any justice in the world, behaving like a bully or a jerk wouldn’t just change the way other people saw you; it would make you grow an elbow out of your forehead or an extra ear on your chin. It would make you gross.”

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