Review & Giveaway - Helens-of-Troy

Gilmore Girls with Bite!

Helen Bocelli, along with her Goth daughter Ellie, packs up their stuff and heads back home to live with her mother, Helena, in a small town called Troy after leaving her husband. In addition, there is a great welcoming gift for the two - a dead body on the porch on Halloween Night. The site of the dead man does not spook Ellie, but she is more interested in the local boys who live nearby.

     Ellie has a strange dream of a young girl and is shocked to learn the next day that a local girl is missing. Ellie is not like other teenage girls as she knows what goes bump in the night, and in this case, it is a bloodsucking vampire.

    When I read that this book was Gilmore Girls meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I had to review it as I have been watching the Gilmore reruns and I grew up watching Buffy. The three female characters are completely different from the Gilmores, but the quirky fast-paced dialogue is similar. The grandmother Helena is like no grandma I have every seen. She dresses and acts like a woman thirty years younger than her. I thought it was funny how the teenager Ryan was after her. The mother Helen has almost given up on her life and finding love. Now Ellie does remind of Rory Gilmore, except she dresses in Goth and has some supernatural elements to her. Ellie is smart, speaks her mind, and is more mature than most teenagers are.

    There is a killer lose in the town of Troy, and Ellie can sense that it is a vampire, but who would believe her. With the overuse of vampires in the media, I was somewhat put back by this idea, but as I further read, I learned that this vampire does not sparkle. The vampire, who I will not name here, is an old-fashioned, scary walker of the night. This vampire is serious, and is more inline with the Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi type of vamps.

    Straightforward dialogue, some humor, and a supernatural theme, makes Helens-of-Troy a bit of fresh air in a world where vampires are drying up fast.

*I would like to thank Bewitching Book Tours for providing with a review copy.

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About the Author:

HELENS-OF-TROY is the second novel completed by Janine McCaw. For the Vancouver-based novelist it is the continuation of a dream, and the fruit of years of working in a different creative realm. 

 

McCaw’s deep understanding of compelling plots, widely appealing characters, natural dialogue and strong story arcs comes directly out of her early career in the film and television industry. McCaw’s skills as an observer started early when her family uprooted from the City to small town Ontario – and she became the classic fish out of water. Writing down her thoughts became an outlet as she scribbled her way through childhood, while she also developed her observational skills and visual eye with photography. A die-hard hockey fan, McCaw studied Cinematography at Humber College, and was headed for a career as a cameraperson covering professional sports when she landed an internship in a broadcasting services company. 

 McCaw excelled in the television distribution arena. She joined Thomas Howe & Associates and moved with that company to Vancouver, where she distinguished herself with her talent for identifying the right product for the right market, and her people-skills in negotiating contracts. After furthering her professional development with several high-profile Canadian entertainment companies, she parlayed her reputation as a leading Cable Programming specialist into her own boutique firm. Formed with a partner, Dark Horse Ent. specialized in finding, and selling, niche Canadian television series - entertainment, information and variety - around the Globe. McCaw also acted as an independent executive producer on award-winning television Classic Car series, CHROME DREAMS, and as a distributor for series including ENTRÉE TO ASIA, and AT HOME WITH HERBS. 

 

In high demand as an insightful, humorous and engaging guest speaker, juror and analyst for festivals and trade forums around the country, McCaw also spent large amounts of time traveling abroad to television markets. Writing relieved the stress of constantly being on the road. Increasingly, she turned her main hobby into outlines for novels, and finished fleshing out the characters, plot and dialogue for OLIVIA’S MINE, a fictional account of a young bride’s struggle to make a life for herself against the backdrop of the disasters that hit Britannia Beach, British Columbia in the early 1900s. The book was released in 2006 and continues to be sold at the British Columbia Museum of Mining. 

 

HELENS-OF-TROY was released early in 2012. McCaw is also currently developing eight other stories for novel form. All set on the Pacific North West and in Canada’s North, they include the murder mystery A LITTLE FIRST DEGREE, a feel-good trilogy THE INN AT HAZY WATERS (Northern Exposure meets Fantasy Island), and PUMPER an action romance that has already garnered interest as the basis for a feature film.