Yes, I return to the world of early 2000s nostalgia with this series-My Sister the Vampire. This time I read all eighteen books. Here’s the initial premise.

When Olivia Abbott moves to town, she’s excited to join the cheerleading team and make new friends. Then she meets Ivy Vega. At first, Ivy, pale and dressed all in black, looks like Olivia’s opposite. Then the girls look beyond the glittery pink blush and thick black eyeliner to discover they’re identical—identical twins! Olivia and Ivy are brimming with plans to switch places and pull every twin trick in the book. But Olivia soon discovers that she and Ivy aren’t exactly the same. Ivy’s a vampire. And she’s not the only one in town.

If you ignore that in the beginning there is little nuance in the goth lifestyle (like it’s impossible for the characters to imagine that goths can’t be uniform in their tastes of music/clothing/interests), my overall impression is that it still works.

The books have little messages but don’t come off too preachy. There’s some world-building but doesn’t give up the slice of life adventures. The character grow which is unusual for a middle grade series as they literally graduate from eighth grade and go onto their freshmen year of high school. Mercer was willing to show friendships change, interests change, antagonists pop in and out of your life because of changing school districts, and former enemies can become frenemies with maturity.

For example, Olivia starts off as a peppy cheerleader. She’s still peppy, but she finds her true love is in acting and focuses on that exclusively in high school rather than cheerleading. She also becomes more desensitized by the morbid/gross side of vampire life. Ivy is reserved at first, but soon becomes as meddlesome as her twin and generally becomes more open with her affection even though she’s not a fan of mushy sentimentality.

The same goes with their friends. Olivia’s bestie is a sci-fi geek, but that trait dissipates with her newfound passion in directing. She also appears less as she moves to a different school. Ivy’s best friend ends up joining the music/skater crowd. Initially it was for a crush, but she soon starts to enjoy those activities herself.

I also admire how Mercer portrays a very stable, loving couple with Ivy and Brenden. They occasionally get into tiffs, but are generally quite supportive yet willing to call each other out, and they have fun together. It’s just so sweet, and so mature. Olivia gets the boyfriend drama since she’s dating a movie star. He’s nice, but work comes between them a lot.

Honestly, Olivia’s boyfriend, Jackson, is way too good to be true. He’s entertaining, but doesn’t have the normal, nice with flaws characterization that I enjoy with Brenden. Like he always manages to figure out how to win Olivia back or assure her of his commitment to the relationship. Which is good, but can’t he have something quirky too?

Maybe that’s because I didn’t like how he was a major focus of the last book in the series-Fangs for the Memories- where Olivia decides she can’t keep the vampire secret any longer and wants to have a really honest relationship with him. I had to agree with the head vampire, Jackson is a nice guy, but she can’t break the rule every time she has a boyfriend. The ending was predictable too, but I appreciated book 17-Spooktacular- as a series conclusion more as it brings old reoccurring characters back, acknowledges how they’ve all changed and grown in the past year, and focuses on the main relationship of the series, Olivia and Ivy’s sisterhood.

To be fair, I don’t think book 18 was meant to be the series finale. It seemed like they were setting up another hook, but simply didn’t get renewed. I wouldn’t be surprised as the first four books came out in 2008-09, but the next 14 started in 2011. Since wiki informs me that Sienna Mercer is a pen name for multiple authors, I suspect the first author wrote the original four (which had a very clear storyline of the girls finding out about each other, their bio-parents and how they can be one human/one vampire twin that is wrapped up in the four books) while the other ghost-writers came on afterwards when Harpercollins/Scholastic saw a chance to continue the series.

It would explain how the series felt a little more fantastical after the first four, revealing that their related to vampire royalty, Olivia becoming a movie star, etc. More far-flung, let’s go to exotic locales plots. They also sidestepped what could have been interesting plots like their dad remarrying (the wedding was off-page), Ivy staying with her grandparents in Transylvania, etc.

Which were fun, but you could sense the shift in tone. You could also see the continuity errors like Jackson saying he played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet in book 7 when he played Mercutio. Or that he doesn’t like vampire books when his first meeting with Olivia was quoting a Count Vira book with her. The continuity is usually very good, so that’s what made it so noticeable.

It’s a fun series to pass the time, and it’s cool to see the characters grow. To be honest, I hope there is a small cult of reader fans that still read these books for its different, less angsty take on the vampire lifestyle, and the fun that could be had in a supernatural suburban setting.