Undead and Unwed follows Tiffanie, a 300 year old vampire who is looking for love. She decides to move to Vermont and falls into a Christmas hallmark movie with a good looking Christmas Tree Farmer as a neighbour however, all is not as it seems and Tiffanie finds that she needs to grasp death by the fangs in order to move forward.

The characters throughout this book were very enjoyable. There were none that I actively disliked however I did find that I wasn’t all too bothered by them. They’re well-developed and remain consistent throughout the story, each adding their own tidbit here and there.

Tiffanie is an interesting character as she’s a vampire battling with her inner demons. At times, she was difficult to engage with (as a reader) and some of the things she did or said made little to no sense, however it does all make more sense towards the end.

That being said the romance aspect was not great. It didn’t give you a love “triangle” feel as it just seemed like one of them was in the running to make the other significantly jealous and therefore mould that one into the “perfect” partner. It was lacking. The whole romance aspect was. I didn’t swoon once but that’s because I didn’t care as you were to’ing and fro’ing.

All in all, it was fine. It wasn’t what I was expecting but it was okay overall and it was good in places. The modern references were a bit jarring and I didn’t particularly like them but it was okay overall.

Thank you to Quirk Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read in exchange for a review.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for the free Kindle book. My review is voluntarily given, and my opinions are my own.

Tiffenie is at least a 300 year old vampire and purchased a false identity of the black web. She has been living as Tiffany for several years now, when she gets notified she inherited a house in Vermont. Now she (and a neighbor and accidentally turned into a vampire) are living there, as she is trying to pass as a person everyone knows but hasn't seen in years.

I absolutely loved this so much and would definitely recommend this!

Undead and Unwed by Sam Tschida - ARC review. 
 


The FMC Tiffenie, a 300 year old vampire gave a relatable my life is chaotic vibe. Her energy was soooo good, so relatable in the I'm a hot mess kind of way. She inherits a B&B in Vermont and after a little bit of an .. accident.. is required to skip town in LA and move. This felt very Hallmark in the aspect of second chances, found family, and Christmas vibes. Especially with a spunky Christmas tree farmer?!

I thought this one was written very well and I liked the storyline progression; it’s everything I hoped from a paranormal vampire romance.

The small town vibes, LOVE. And Vlad attemping to set Tiffenie up for masterclasses??? Had me giggling.

🌸✨ Book Review Template ✨🌸
📖 Title: Undead and Unwed
✍️ Author: Sam Tschida
📚 Genre: Romance, Paranormal, Vampires
🌟 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🧛‍♀️🩸

💭 My Thoughts:
First Impressions: I think the beginning was just a little slow, but it did pick up. Once I got into it, I could not put this back down at all.
Favorite Character: I loved Heaven. Her vibes are what I need to channel in my life.

Plot Vibes: This story felt like a mix of What We Do In the Shadows and some cute Hallmark movie about a Christmas tree farmer. It had laugh out loud moments and moments of great lessons.

🧁 Final Thoughts:
I liked that this wasn’t your traditional Hallmark Movie. There was definitely a good amount of self-growth with the main character, Tiffenie. She may have been 300 years old but she had some great development and I enjoyed the ending. There were a few areas of the story that did not flow as well as others. I think there were some time jumps that could have been more clear. However, other than that this was a good book and I look forward to when it is officially published.


Would I read it again? Yeah – I think this would be a good winter read.

ARC Review
Undead and Unwed by Sam Tschida

If Schitt’s Creek, a Hallmark Christmas movie, and What We Do in the Shadows had a slightly unhinged vampire baby—Undead and Unwed would be it.

Tiffenie is a 300-year-old vampire with the chaotic energy of a millennial midlife crisis. She’s sarcastic, semi-employed, addicted to cheesy romance movies, and fully in denial about her life (or afterlife?). When she inherits a house in a cozy Vermont town—under someone else’s name—she jumps at the chance to reinvent herself, rom-com style. What follows is a ridiculous, delightful, often heartfelt story about self-discovery, second chances, and extremely awkward undead situations.

🧛‍♀️ What I loved:
• Tiffenie is hilarious and relatable in that hot-mess kind of way—you’ll root for her even as she makes questionable decisions.
• The tone is pitch-perfect for a paranormal romantic comedy: irreverent, fast-paced, and bursting with one-liners.
• The small-town vibes are on point, and the supporting characters (including a charming Christmas tree farmer, a grumpy neighbor she accidentally turns, and a delightfully obnoxious vampire ex) round it out with flair.
• Underneath the chaos and camp, there’s real heart. Tiffenie’s journey of self-worth and therapy-as-a-vampire? Weirdly touching.

⚠️ What didn’t totally work for me:
• The plot leans hard into rom-com absurdity, which is great—but some twists (especially involving the stolen identity) felt rushed or glossed over.
• A few jokes were almost too self-aware; if you’re not into meta-humour or pop culture references, it may wear thin.
• Vlad, the ex, was a little underused—I wouldn’t have minded more mess there.

🎄 Final thoughts:
If you like your vampires messy, your Christmases chaotic, and your romance sprinkled with snark and self-growth, Undead and Unwed will absolutely charm you. It’s paranormal escapism with a therapist on speed dial—and I mean that in the best way.

It is rare that I will pick up an ARC that I really don't gel with because, frankly, I am only requesting the book if I think I am going to LOVE it. Unfortunately Undead and Unwed was one of those rare occasions where the book just did not work for me.

My issues with this book largely revolve around the characterisation of Tiffenie / Tiffany. The best way that I can describe her is adorkable which just quickly began to grate on me because it didn't feel like she was organically cute or dorky but rather like it was a personality she had decided to adopt. I had a hard time reconciling the different sides of Tiffenie. Okay, slight detour here as a I mentioned one of the continuity / anachronisms that really annoyed me,,, Tiffenie mentions on multiple occasions that she is from the Middle Ages however she is very much not from the Middle Ages as she lived in the 1700s 🙃 And back to why Tiffenie didn't work for me... at the point that I abandoned this book because I was just not having a good time, we had only gotten the smallest of backstory for her becoming a vampire but we are essentially told it was ultimately because she fell in love with a vampire but she als0 had children (and was presumably married) so it just felt like we weren't being drip-fed in quite the right order. Tiffenie's blasé attitude to her children and that they would now be "dust" was pretty uncomfortable too. I just generally had a hard time conceptualising Tiffenie as anything other than a struggling person in her early twenties who had no life experience despite having hit many milestones before becoming a vampire and then living for centuries beyond that. Tiffenie, darling, how are you still so darn clueless?!?!?!

The foil for Tiffenie is her neighbour, Heaven, we she accidentally turns into a vampire. I didn't particularly enjoy Heaven and she felt somewhat underutilised as there was a potential for something interesting to be explored through the fact that you have this person who loves the sun haven't that ripped from her.

My other grievance with this book was the somewhat lax application of vampire lore. Whilst there isn't truly one fixed definition of what makes a vampire, I think there are certain fairly popular features that can be used as a shortcut so you don't need to expand on lore for readers. For the most part, this book leaned into this shortcut - which is very much fine - however one thing that stood out was that vampires and religion REALLY don't mix in this world. Except when they do. At one point, Tiffenie feels her skin starting to blister / burn for thinking "God" yet she later talks about "the Holy Spirit" and nothing happens. This also happens when surrounding by Christian decor: one of the characters is able to read and be close to a cushion with a religious message until she touches it whilst another character starts to feel themselves burning just from being near religious items. It just didn't quite add up.

Do I think this book is a bad book? Not particularly. What I do think is that I am unfortunately not the reader for this book as there were just too many little issues that were too hard for me to overlook and I was not particularly enjoying the narrative. I am excited for this book to find its readership but that does not include me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quirk Books for the ARC.
This book is sold as a "Bridget Jones's Diary meets What We Do in the Shadows in this bitingly funny supernatural romance about a vampire finding herself and falling in love during the Christmas season" but it ended up falling short, trying to do too much. Tiffenie is sold as a hot mess, but making her 300 years old just doesn't add up with how much of a mess she is. The characters felt like it was a forced relationships (friends and romantic). Also the pacing needs to be revised before final print as it did not make sense at times.

Genuinely don't know how to rate this. I liked the story itself, and it mostly delivered on its promises, but the pacing was all over the place and there was a lot of repetition that didn't feel intentional that kept distracting me. Will take a look at the final version once its released and decide on a rating then.

Unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me. I had to DNF it at around 30% as nor plot nor characters clicked with me.

Thank you so much to netgalley and quirk books for the arc of this book🫶🏼

I enjoyed this. It was thoroughly entertaining. Almost like a mix of a hallmark film with a romcom. I liked the characters, there was a lot of witty banter and the main characters inner monologue was really funny. She was a great character and so was her vampire bestie Heaven. I also really enjoyed the relationship between the main character and her therapist. I didn’t really enjoy the spicy scenes and didn’t feel like they brought much to the story. I didn’t really enjoy the love triangle thing going on- it’s one of my least favourite tropes.

Would I read this again? No, but I would recommend it to people for a light easy read

This book was an adventure from start to finish. Tiffani’s journey shows that healing can be messy and intense, but always worth it. The ending is sweet and satisfying.

The premise, combining paranormal with a Hallmark-esque romance, sounded incredibly interesting and I was looking forward to a cozy rom-com. However, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. I felt that the characters weren't fully developed and lacked genuine chemistry, coming across as somewhat superficial. Additionally, the pacing of the story seemed inconsistent, which made it a bit difficult to get fully immersed. Thank you to NetGalley and Quirk Books for the ARC!

Tschida's storytelling combines wit and cozy warmth, complementing the picture-perfect holiday charm of Vermont during Christmas. Tiffenie, a 300-year-old vampire who inherits a home in Valentine, relocates to Vermont in search of self-discovery. Determined to leave out her rom-com holiday, she and her undead neighbor might be in for a roller coaster. Will she fit into this small town with her identity in question, her vampire ex-boyfriend Vlad making an unexpected appearance, and co-living with a newly turned vampire who was previously her social media-active neighbor Heaven? The wit and humor in this book are well executed, making it more enjoyable. Personally, I see Tiffenie as the female version of Klaus from The Originals. This book is captivating, both literally and metaphorically

This is a festive paranormal romcom that wants to be Bridget Jones meets What We Do in the Shadows meets Hallmark holiday movie, and to its credit, it sort of is. But while the premise is delightfully unhinged—a vampire inherits a B&B in Vermont and takes a road trip with her freshly-turned influencer neighbor—it didn’t quite land for me in execution. It’s chaotic, quippy, occasionally charming, and often frustrating. I wanted to like it more than I did, but I think it honestly would’ve worked better as a movie.

Let’s start with the good: the concept is great. Tiffenie is a vampire who’s been undead for 300 years but somehow still has zero life skills, drinks bagged blood and necks her neighbor, and is obsessed with Hallmark movies. When the woman whose identity she stole inherits a crumbling inn, Tiffenie packs up her life, her cat, and her neighbor and heads to Vermont to start over. Cue romantic chaos with a local Christmas tree farmer, a mini murder mystery, and the reappearance of her ex and vampire creator, Vlad. The bones of a seasonal paranormal romcom are all here, and if this were a Netflix movie starring someone with big chaotic wine aunt energy, I’d probably be all in.

But the novel’s biggest strength (Tiffenie’s over-the-top internal monologue) is also its biggest weakness. In small doses, her irreverent, self-deprecating narration is fun. In full novel form? Exhausting. The stream-of-consciousness style tries to be quirky, but it frequently veers into willful incompetence, and there were times I wanted to reach through the page and shake her. There’s a fine line between “relatable hot mess” and “300-year-old vampire who somehow still doesn’t understand how time or money works,” and Tiffenie lives on the wrong side of it a lot of the time. She also drops hints to her past (village life, children, a dead best friend) but then absolutely doesn’t expand on them ever because she is emotionally constipated and avoidant, which is a shame because the backstory might do a whole lot to make her deliberate obtuseness more likable.

Things I liked: The premise. Truly. This had all the makings of a great seasonal romcom with paranormal flair. Just the conceit of a vampire that tries to stay vegan by drinking coconut water is hilarious to me, and I actually laughed out loud when they tried to burn the bible paraphernalia. The varied side characters, from Mariah B Gary to Rob, the BDSM loving fireman. Also those therapist scenes were great and probably my favorite recurring gag. Tiffenie’s therapist is just trying her best and is so out of her depth. Heaven was also a great character. A sun loving vampire with a penchant for woo-woo crystals?

Things I Didn’t: Look, I like spice as much as the next girl, but the open-door scenes here felt abrupt and unnecessary. They didn’t add much to the romance or character development and often pulled me out of the story. And speaking of romance and character development, I didn’t get any of that with the actual romance either. Tiffenie’s connection with Tyrone is mostly physical, and her dynamic with Vlad is underexplored despite their supposedly centuries-long history. There just wasn’t enough development to make either relationship emotionally compelling, and I truly didn’t care who she ended up with. And lastly, Tiffanie herself may have been the worst part of the book for me. I wanted to root for her, but her lack of growth and constant snark wore thin, and weren’t grounded in anything. She complained about how terrible the vampire rules were without ever explaining why she felt that way, making her sound like a 300 year old grump teenager having a temper tantrum. I’m sorry, but after the third time you almost kill someone out of hunger, don’t you think you might need to lay off the coconut water?

This book is very vibez over logic, and while that works for some people, I needed a bit more structure, emotional grounding, and believable character dynamics to get fully on board. I kept thinking how much better this would have been as a holiday movie: cut the monologue down, trim the chaotic pacing, play up the visuals and the setting, and this could be a cozy, campy, fang-filled good time.

I’m giving this 3 stars for an excellent concept and madcap escapades (the therapy scenes, dear god), that suffer from an annoying narrator. It’s not a bad book by any means, just not quite the one for me.

Perfect for fans of: vegan vampires, small-town charm, sexy Santa Claus, coconut water, Hallmark parodies, Christmas cheer, allll the pop culture references, home renovations, and protagonists who just cannot get their shit together

So I want to start off that I wanted to LOVE this book. It had so much going for it. Vampires? Hell yes! Hallmark references? YOU BETCHA! Small town setting? TELL ME MORE.

Unfortunately the writing was so hard for me to get through. I felt like the characters and plot needed to be fleshed out more and it just fell flat for me. I wish this book had another round of edits because the potential of this book was so there!

One of my favorite highlights: Vlad trying to set our Tiffenie up with masterclasses and courses.

Nice, fluffy romance-y read with a twist!!

Loved the main character's voice and inner monologue as well as references to pop culture about vampires. Loved the contrast between her and the neighbour.
Little bit of spice but not too much! 🌶️

I didn't love the ending. I wish the character had spent more time working on herself but I love the found family element of the book.

Hilarious and heartwarming: Bridget Jones with bloodlust!

I don’t normally do vampire books, but I’m a sucker for a Hallmark Christmas film and I was intrigued by the premise of this novel - Tiffenie is a 300 year old vampire who is trying to live ethically, but it’s hard being a vegan vamp and she’s living the kind of half-life (or death?) many of us can recognise. When the stolen identify she’s living under inherits a run-down old guest house in Vermont she jumps at the chance to start afresh and live out her Christmas movie dreams - including the hunky Christmas tree farmer. Things do not go to plan.

This was a sparky, funny, surprisingly lovely, and really very good read.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

So you have read the synopsis and are looking at reviews now, right? Right.

So what I thought was brilliant about this book was that each “chapter” was its own trope. All of the characters are a mess in their own ways. The poor town psychiatrist is treating everyone except three people and she knows their business too!

No one believes Tiffenie, Heaven and Vlad are Vampires, even when they break the Vampire Code and tell EVERYONE.

The psychiatrist believes it is a metaphor or they are a cult. Tiffenie doesn’t even know what she is doing after 300 years and now she (spoiler) as well as her cat to care for. She left Vlad to be independent and feels like she stuffed herself in a box instead.

There is so much going on in the town of Valentine, the only problem is most of it is during the day. Will Tiffenie finally figure out some self love after 300 years? Can she make friends? Embrace her dark side (her poor psychiatrist is just a little out of her depth with some of her advice for her). Can Vlad change? Can they both figuratively “embrace the light”?

I would love to tell you more, but I try not to include spoilers and the tropes give you an idea of what to expect, but not always how it is delivered.

If you are looking for a different kind of vampire story, I definitely recommend this one. I would like to thank the author, Quirk Books and NetGalley for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own and my review is voluntarily shared. As always, I wish you happy reading!

Note: NetGalley Advanced Reader Copy Review - Thank you to Quirk Books

3.5 ⭐️ rounded up.

Tiffenie is a 300 year old vampire but that doesn’t mean she’s not a hot mess. We follow along as she decides it’s time to leave her mess behind and try to get her hallmark happy ending. She runs away to Vermont and tries to fix up her inheritance, a run down bed and breakfast, while looking for love with the local Christmas tree farmer. If only she could step out during daylight or say the word Christmas without burning.

I enjoyed the humor and the fact this bloodthirsty vampire just wants to live out her hallmark dreams while everything that could go wrong does.

The ending felt a little rushed and like maybe Tiffenie didn’t really learn much but then again that’s how I feel about most hallmark Christmas shows too.

If you want a silly romance read this Halloween or Christmas that’s full of low stakes paranormal adventures then add this one to your list.

I loved this light hearted rom com vampire meets hallmark, predictable plot but I enjoy anything with vampires so I had a great time reading!