Driving Mr. Dead (Half-Moon Hollow #1.5)

Like I said I have been on a Molly Harper kick, and I figure might as well start reading Driving Mr. Dead: 1) it’s part of the Half-Moon Hollow series 2) I got to hear a sample of the story. 3) Miranda Puckett was mention in A Witch’s Handbook to Kisses and Curses. However, I found Driving Mr. Dead is kind of in a weird space. It might be because it was published before the last Jane Jameson book, and before the first Half-Moon Hollow, so there are timeline issues here. Other than that it was a fun read.

We have Miranda Puckett who is a walking disaster, who needs time to think, because her fiancee is a douchebag. Yes, a walking douchebag, but he gets what he deserves. I wish it was a little more violent, oh well. Then we have Colin Sutherland. Oh Colin. Talk about a stick in a butt. The start of the road trip was probably not the most easiest. In some ways it made me think of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles as they were trying to make their way back to Half-Moon Hollow. Talk a Murphy’s Law kind of trip.

Overall, Molly Harper brings another fun vampire story. A super quick read that will have you laughing from start to finish. Granted I did choke up towards the end, because of Colin’s poor choice of words. Anyway, if you are need of an escape, you might want to take a road trip to Half-Moon Hollow in Driving Mr. Dead.

Rating:
4 1/2 Stars

Yep! Molly Harper has done it again in “Driving Mr. Dead”. Miranda is a great character, unfortunately possibly because she reminds me of someone, someone very close. Her wonderfully snarky sense of humor fits the character perfectly. And Collin is very well written too! It’s well paced and a quick, stress-free read, that’ll hopefully leave you writing a good review with a smile on your face at the end.

Serial rolling-stone, Miranda Puckett, is on the first day of her new job for Beeline – driving vampire’s cross-country as their personal chauffer. And her first client has perfect timing – providing Miranda with some much needed Washington-to-Kentucky driving/thinking time to sort out her ever-destructive life and butt-dialling ex-fianc.

It’s just a shame that Miranda’s maiden voyage is with Collin Sutherland. A pretentious, reclusive, up-tight vamp with sixteen-pages of instructions for his chauffer and a silver suitcase that he refuses to talk about.

This is going to be one long road-trip to Half-Moon Hollow . . . and along the way there will be car-boobs, muggings, MC Hammer and Hawaiian shirts. Oh, joy.

`Driving Mr. Dead’ is the 160-page novella set in Molly Harper’s `Jane Jameson’ universe.

What is the appropriate reaction when one of your favourite, funny authors writes a special little novella treat set in her established-series universe? Why, fan-girl squealing – of course! And let me assure you, Molly Harper’s `Driving Mr. Dead’ is entirely deserving of your peals of squeals!

Harper introduces us to Miranda Puckett – employee to daytime vampire concierge, Iris Scanlon, who readers met in `Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbours’, and who has her own spin-off book coming out this month called `The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires’. Miranda is a wayward soul with itchy feet and an ever-changing resume. She has been a cruise ship dogsbody and magician’s assistant but her favourite job of all was as professional photographer. In recent years she has tried squeezing herself into a life that pleases her parents – as paralegal and fiance to the white-picket-fence good boy, Jason. But that’s all gone up in smoke after Jason’s discovered text message, professing his love for his best friend (and Miranda’s maid-of-honour), Lisa. Miranda has taken the chauffeuring job at Beeline, partly to reconnect with her crazy-wild-card roots, but also to take a week or two of space and decide if she can accept Jason’s apology and re-proposal.

Miranda’s first client is Colin Sutherland, a vampire with a silver suitcase, anal-retentive sixteen-pages of chauffeuring instructions and “more issues than National Geographic”. Miranda and Colin get off to a bad, finger-breaking start, and things just get worse from there . . . but as the miles tick by and the ludicrous bad-luck keeps knocking them around, Miranda starts to shed Colin’s many pretentious layers and get to his deeply hidden sexy centre.

I loved this novella! And I mostly loved it because it’s *so* Molly Harper. Honestly, I can’t think of any writer I’d trust more with tackling a hilarious, cross-country vampiric road-trip. She just had to write this because there’s nobody else more qualified. Period.

And she does such a darn good job! As if anyone needed proof that Harper has an untapped resource in exploring the `Jane Jameson’ universe, beyond her hilarious vampire-librarian heroine, `Driving Mr. Dead’ will assuage you of any lingering doubts and get you suitably excited for `The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires’. Of course, a few `Jane’ favourites make appearances – but I won’t spoil who because their random pop-up is just too delicious!

Miranda and Colin absolutely steal the show in this buddy-road-trip-plot-gone-awry. They are exact opposites; she the wild child free-spirit, accident-prone cool chick. While he’s a stuffy recluse, with some serious old-world appeal.

I love anything and everything that Molly Harper writes. This novella is just the cherry on top of an already brilliant, established paranormal comedy series that keeps readers in blushes and chuckles. Brilliant!

To date, Miranda has yet to find her niche. Shes failed at everything else shes tried, but its not her fault things havent worked out. Her family isnt happy when she takes a job providing transportation for vampires and she thinks this just might be her best fit as she likes to drive. She starts to question that when arriving a day late in picking up Mr Sutherland, who has a major stick up his butt and a sixteen page contract that shes expected to follow during their trip from WA to KY.

If anything can go wrong it will, but her philosophy and unpredictability has Collin Sutherland coming out of his shell.

Definitely a funny tale and I hadnt realized when starting it that it was only a novella. I hadnt read any of the authors vampire stories and since reading this one, Ive read the first two Jane Jameson stories.

The character and world building are well done considering the length of the story, and as with every other book Ive read by this author, its the characters and situations that make this an enjoyable read.

“After failing as a magician’s assistant, a photographer, and most recently, a bride, Miranda Puckett takes a position as a driver for Beeline, Half-Moon Hollow’s premiere vampire concierge service.

Miranda’s assignment? Driving Collin Sutherland, the world’s most fastidious vampire from Washington to Kentucky, so he can deliver a mysterious black case to Council official Ophelia Lambert.

Collin, a paranoid, aristocratic vampire with a debilitating fear of flying, refuses to let the case out of his sight. Miranda needs this time on the road to decide whether to permanently cut her ties with the fiance that had an “emotional affair” with a childhood pal, but Collin’s neatnik tendencies are driving her around the bend. The man acts as if leaving a fast food wrapped on the passenger seat is reason for a full-on CDC decontamination scrub-down of the car. All she can do is promise to stop intentionally doing the things that make his stiff upper lip twitch with irritation.

As more and more mishaps occur on the road trip from hell, Miranda and Collin work together to meet his delivery deadline. Hotel rooms are destroyed. Beloved cars are defiled. And somewhere along the line, client-driver hostilities become snarky flirtation.

Will Collin and Miranda make it to the Hollow in one piece? And if they do, will Miranda leave old, safe relationships behind for something new and well, just plain weird?”

***

OK – so this isn’t really breaking any new ground. The main focus of DRIVING MR. DEAD is the burgeoning romance, no surprise what happens there. What makes this read a winner is the humour;. Simply put; Molly Harper is hilarious and she projects her sense of humour through her characters.

You may have noticed the one of the setting for DRIVING MR. DEAD is Sleepy Moon Hollow, the setting for the author’s ‘Jane Jameson’ series of books. However this is a completely different series. Fingers crossed that the later books in it also get released in the not-too-distant future…

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