It is not uncommon while reading a book to wish that you could meet your favorite character, or characters. Maybe, you have even developed a crush on the protagonist. Possibly, you have even fallen for the antagonist. It is certainly a common phenomenon for the women who read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

Allison Van Diepen’s The Vampire Stalker is a story about a high school girl, Amy, who meets the man of her dreams – who also happens to be the main character from a popular book series.

The Vampire Stalker takes place in present day Chicago and there is nothing strange about Amy’s life. She goes to school, spends time with her two best friends, and she reads. Amy, though, has fallen for Alexander Banks of the Otherworld series, which revolve around a very different Chicago where vampires exist. Alexander Banks is a vampire hunter in the books’ version of Chicago. Amy writes fan fiction for books and even has an account on a fan site where her name is Mrs.AlexanderBanks8021.

Then one night after a school dance, Amy is attacked. Who comes to her rescue? The very Alexander Banks from the Otherworld series she loves. He is in her Chicago to hunt down the main antagonist from the books, Vigo, a menacing vampire.

The aspect I love most about this story is that Van Dieper brings a literary character into Amy’s world. Unlike many books out there, the leading guy is not a vampire. Instead, he is a vampire hunter. To me that is a nice change of pace from the scores of vampire books out there now after Twilight’s success. In the story Vigo has no seemingly no morals and is therefore not against killing humans for sport. Vigo does not go against the monster he has become.

In the 257 pages of the book, Amy manages to fall in love with Alexander as a person, learn to stand up to bullies, and help kill a vampire. Amy’s infatuation quickly turns from a hardcore crush on a book character to love for the man the character really is. Within a week or so Amy admits to Alexander that she loves him.