Product Description

Betsy Taylor has problems that only a vampire queen/suburban wife could possibly understand...such as fifty thousand angry werewolves. That's what Betsy is facing when she takes her werewolf friend Antonia's body to Cape Cod, where the Pack resides at Wyndham Mansion. Because Antonia died in her service, Betsy is alive and well - and wracked with guilt. She has no idea if the Wyndham werewolves will welcome her with fangs or friendship. While Betsy and her husband Sinclair try to make nice, their legal ward BabyJon is freaking out every werewolf he comes in contact with. Meanwhile, Betsy's posse back at the St Paul mansion are not happy. Increasingly frantic emails alert Betsy to her half-sister's increasingly erratic behavior. Looks like the devil's daughter is coming into her own - and raising hell. All in the name of making Betsy's life easier, of course.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27925 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
MaryJanice Davidson has written in a variety of genres, including contemporary romance, paranormal romance, erotica and non-fiction. She lives in Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

Unwelcome guests
The climax of the seventh Queen Betsy book ended in a shocking way for such a light'n'frothy series: the death of one of Betsy's friends.

And "Undead and Unwelcome" is all about the fallout between the vampires and werewolves, and all the problems that Betsy has to deal with when she takes Antonia's body home. MaryJanice Davidson manages to infuse her latest adventure with the vampire queen with plenty of pathos, a tinge of weirdness (what is UP with BabyJon?) and gentle humor, but the subplot involving Betsy's devilish sister somehow doesn't fit into this puzzle.

Betsy and Sinclair fly off to the castle-like citadel of the Pack, with Antonia's body in tow -- and they're rather surprised that the Pack immediately starts showing great grief and/or resentment about Antonia's death, since they almost drove her out. Betsy isn't too happy about the situation, particularly since the unfriendly werewolves outnumber them by thousands -- and they're all too happy to blame Antonia's death on her.

But Betsy being Betsy, she doesn't intend to take all this unjustified criticism lying down. And to make matters a little weirder, she's lunching with a pregnant crazy woman who claims to be Morgan le Fay's reincarnation, babysitting little alphas, facing down a werewolf council, and wondering what's up with Babyjon. Said infant causes Derik to utterly freak out, and Michael keeps forgetting that he's even there. Very weird.

In the meantime, Marc is left home with Betsy's saintly-yet-demonic sister Laura, who is being stalked by gangs of roving Satanists (no, I am not making this up). Marc tries to help Laura with her ongoing problem... but he unwittingly triggers a change in Laura, showing that there is nothing more evil than an obsessive do-gooder...

I have to give MaryJanice Davidson credit -- not many authors of urban-fantasy would adopt a frothy, slightly ditzy chick-lit approach, and even fewer would use that frothy ditzy approach to handle the subject of death and grief. But she does a pretty good job blending her tongue-in-cheek vampire queen's antics and problems even as she deals with the messy aftermath of Antonia's death.

And though the main story is about the overhanging possibility of a werewolf/vampire war, Davidson keeps some focus on Betsy's oft-comedic antics (fanging out during a playground brawl) and amusing dialogue ("What, are you a superstar pregnant ninja warrior or something"). Even a tense showdown with the devil worshipers has an edge of humor ("I want you athholth out of my houth!").

The problem? Well, quite honestly the subplot about Laura LHM (losing her mind) and GITTPOE (giving in to the forces of evil feels rather clunky when slapped next to the main storyline. It does admittedly lead to a (literally) smashing finale, and some plot threads left hanging for future books.

Betsy's still managed to be a likable vampire queen -- she's kind of flaky and a bit self-absorbed, but she shows plenty of guts (telling off the Pack) and quite a bit of maternal warmth. The supporting characters are also warmly likable, including Betsy's delicious husband Sinclair, her sassy buddy Jessica, and the wide array of werewolves -- from the mellow Michael to the prickly Derek. And Laura has some serious soul-searching to do after this, given how scary she can get.

"Undead and Unwelcome" explores what happens after a werewolf death, and fortunately MaryJanice Davidson writes it like a good souffle -- neither too light nor too heavy. The subplot feels rather tacked on until the climax, but it's still a pleasant light read.

Queen Betsy comic vampire story No 8 - arguments with werewolves
This comedy vampire thriller is number eight in a series which combines chick lit romantic comedy and vampire thriller - from the viewpoint of the new and particularly incongruous Queen of the Vampires.

Imagine a cross between "Sex and the City" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and you've roughly got the idea.

Elizabeth Taylor (who prefers to be called Betsy) has some unusually difficult family and relationship problems

* A sister who is the antichrist, and is rebelling against her parent the devil by trying to be good (but has some lethal ideas about how to do so)

* A husband who is King of the vampires

* A baby half-brother, whose guardian she has been since her father and stepmother died, who may have some unusual characteristics of his own, and

* said stepmother occasionally comes back as a ghost to haunt Betsy, and last but not least, this book also includes ...

* Fifty thousand angry werewolves, to whom Betsy is trying to explain how one of their fellow werewolves got killed in her house ...

The plotlines of the first six books were more or less resolved in number six, "Undead and Uneasy." The seventh, "Undead and Unworthy," kicked off what Mary Janice Davidson calls a new "story arc" - she also said that this will be a trilogy. This book, "Undead and Unwelcome" is the middle book in that trilogy, So the full list of Queen Betsy stories to date is

1) Undead and Unwed
2) Undead and Unemployed
3) Undead and Unappreciated
4) Undead and Unreturnable
5) Undead and Unpopular
6) Undead and Uneasy
7) Undead and Unworthy
8) Undead and Unwelcome

There is also a "Queen Betsy" novella in Davidson's book "Dead over Heels" which is a collection of three paranormal romance stories. In my opinion you will get most out of these books if you read them in order: I would start with "Undead and Unwed" and work on from there.

Most of the "Queen Betsy" books are told in the first person by Betsy Taylor, although some chapters of this one are narrated by her friend Doctor Marc Spengler. The first words of the series are "The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry."

Betsy is a former model and is still a fashion fanatic: at the start of the series, on the morning of her disastrous 30th birthday, she is working as a secretary. Her main interests are designer shoes, designer clothes, and her cat. In quick succession she gets fired, loses her cat, and is killed in a car accident. It is a great surprise to her when she rises again as a most unusual vampire. It is even more of a surprise when, through a sequence of bizarre events, she becomes queen of the vampires.

At the start of this eighth book, Betsy and Sinclair have to convey the body of one of their werewolf friends, who was killed in book seven, to the home of the pack. The werewolves are not happy and there is a serious danger of war between the werewolves and vampires.

Meanwhile, Marc suggests to Betsy's sister Laura an imaginative idea for for how to deal with the hosts of devil-worshippers who keep turning up and asking her for instructions. At first the idea appears to be brilliantly successful, but then Laura takes it much too far ...



Mary Davidson has great fun by mixing up the vampire genre as in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" series and Chick-Lit romantic comedy as in "Sex and the City." This series is way over the top, fairly sexy, and usually very funny.


An interesting comparison with other authors who have written entertaining comedies by combining incongruous genres would be with Marianne Mancusi and Robert Frezza.

In the same way that this book gets plenty of laughs by combining chick lit with Vampires, Frezza write two very funny books which combined Vampires and Science Fiction ("McLendon's Syndrome" and "The VMR Theory") and Mancusi combined chick lit with time travel in "A Connecticut Fashionista at King Arthur's Court" and "A Hoboken Hipster in Sherwood Forest." Anyone who likes this book is likely to enjoy all four of those, and vice versa, if you have read and enjoyed any of those books you will probably like this one.

OK, this is never going to win the Booker Prize or any other great award for classic literature, and it is fairly raunchy, so not suitable for children. However, if you have the right sort of sense of humour, it is good fun. I can recommend "Undead and Unwelcome" and also enjoyed reading the rest of the series.

Love it!
I am a huge fan of MJD's Undead series, in particular Betsy! I love the fact that it never takes itself too seriously, and that Betsy has incredible taste in shoes (a girl after my own heart)! If you love tales of vampires, with Carrie Bradshaw style humour (and fashion references) thrown in - then this series is the one for you. All Hail Queen Betsy and may she never be shod in Payless!