THE AWESOME

An apprentice monster hunter will never be promoted if she doesn't get her freak on.

Seventeen-year-old Maggie is training to hunt monsters. With her foulmouthed mom, Maggie travels around Massachusetts as an exterminator of things that go bump in the night—or at least those that endanger regular humans. Maggie desperately wants to become a federally registered journeyman, legally able to hunt vampires, but there's one catch: she needs to lose her virginity first. Young vampires go into a frenzy when they smell virgin blood, so Mom won't let her near a vampire until she gets herself deflowered. How is Maggie—home-schooled, unfashionable, and often covered in ecto—supposed to find what she calls The Sex? An attempt at (hilariously, depressingly) realistic drunken-party sex with a beer-swilling bro fails, leaving Maggie still vulnerable to rampaging bloodsuckers. If her mom weren't such an action-heroine badass, Maggie might have been clawed to death by a baby vamp. The killing of a frenzied vampire drags them into the precarious world of vampire politics, accompanied by the bro (who's actually quite pleasant when not swilling beer). Maggie's profanity-laced, snarky, deeply loving, yet antagonistic relationship with her mother is delightful.

Maggie's adventurous baptism-by-undead provides enough complications to set up a sequel—readers will not want to wait long for it