Tandem by Tracey Bateman, A Review
February 18th, 2011 § 4 Comments
Hold up a copy of Tracey Bateman’s book Tandem next to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and you will notice some similarities. Both authors’ names appear to be in the same font (though it looks like Meyer chose to go bold), and both titles are scripted entirely in lower case. Coincidence?
Covers aside, Bateman and Meyer have chosen different plots, though both books begin with quotes and a prologue/preface that hints at the novel’s ending. Whereas Meyer chose to write about the teenaged affair between girl and vampire, Bateman writes about a slightly older girl taking care of her Alzheimer’s stricken father in a small town shaken by murder.
Lauryn McBride grew up helping her father with his auction business, and now she has the responsibility of auctioning a local Victorian home and the pricey antiques of a man who died mysteriously in a fire. After sending some old family letters found among the items to be auctioned to who she thinks is a decedent of the letters’ writer, Lauryn is inadvertently pulled into a mystery where the main participants are vampires. Along the way she is reunited with her childhood crush, the preacher’s son who is back from serving as a missionary in Haiti.
After Stoker, King, Rice, and Meyer, the vampire theme has been tapped to the point that it is going to take a lot to make an original vampire novel. Being Christian fiction, Tandem does have the distinction of being redemptive, but that only brings up a problem for the author.
Christian fantasy seems like a difficult genre. If you want to write a fantasy book with God in it, it would be a plus to explain how the fantastic elements of the story and an Almighty God can coexist, even just on paper. Bateman offers no explanation for why vampires and God are in the same small American town.
All in all, the story in Tandem was okay, though not something I think I would read again.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.
To download the first two chapters of Tandem, go here and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Thank you once again, Eden, for keeping us in the know!
You bless me . .. and do really good reviews!
Thanks Deb. God bless
You’re right, Eden. God and vampires in one book? Hard to put that together. Sounds like this publisher thinks there’s money in trends. And that’s often correct – but this trend? I can only shake my head.
Btw, as your friendly weather observers from just west of the Continental Divide, we hope that the storm that passed us last night and this morning goes north of you. It’s a nasty one. Several high mountain ranges protected us from getting a lot of snow, but the winds were fierce (our gusts right here were about 60 mph), and caused a lot of drifting. Plus the storm started as rain, which naturally turned to ice. We expect the Interstate (I-80)is closed. East of us, there WILL be lots more snow. So we hope you’re not in its path. If you ARE, be careful.
Blessings.
Hello Pete,
We did get some nasty weather yesterday. I am not sure what the roads are like this morning. Still, everyone here is safe and sound. Hope you and your family are warm and well. Thank you for the concern. Blessings!