YA horror novels set in the eighties and nighties continue to hit the market at speed, with Amy McCaw’s Mina and the Undead the latest example. Set in New Orleans, seventeen-year-old Mina joins her sister in the city for the summer, visiting from Whitby in the UK and hooks up with Libby’s friends and is quickly sucked into a murder mystery after a young woman is killed at the house of horrors, Mansion of the Macabre, where her sister’s cute flatmate Jared works. Her sister is quickly pegged as a suspect and the reader realises that there have been other similar killings and the police are struggling for suspects.

Vampire obsessed Mina was an engaging lead character as she negotiates spending time with her sister’s friends. The supernatural angle was an interesting one and although the vampire story is not introduced properly into the action, the reader could see it coming and I found them rather uninspiring. These types of novels always seem to have the need to continually namecheck the likes of Buffy and The Lost Boys, with Mina and the Undead going one step further by making Ann Rice’s Interview with the Vampire’s Mina’s favourite book. She is also dealing with the disappearance the previous year of her mother and it was so obvious she was going to reappear. Mina and the Undead was a very easy and undemanding read, which although it was fun, would have been better if it toned down the vampire cliches.

This book took me fully by surprise. I don’t read a lot of YA mysteries but when I saw the cover for this book and read the synopsis I wanted to give it a try and… I’m obsessed.
I couldn’t put this book down once I started it stayed up far too late a couple of nights just so I could read one more chapter. There isn’t 1 thing I didn’t like in this book with the backdrop of New Orleans and the 90’s and horror references I knew from the first chapter this was a winner. The story kept me on my toes with constant twist and forever changing my mind on who was the series killer (I was wrong 100% of the time).
If you love Buffy The Vampire Slayer this is a book you have to pick up. As soon as I finished reading the ARC I went to pre-order myself a copy of the book and then to check if there is a sequel listed yet.
Safe to say this is one of my favourite reads of 2020.