Pretty Dead, by Francesca Lia Block

Francesca Lia Block has made her contribution to the body of current teen vampire novels, and it's a fair effort; surpassing most in the genre.  I still think Scott Westerfeld's Peeps is the best of the bunch, but it's low in romance which a lot of vampire-fiction readers demand.

Pretty Dead's Charlotte Emerson is one of the loneliest creatures you've ever met.  Turned at age seventeen, she's spent the last hundred years in regret, longing for a real human life. Then one day things begin to change.  She's writing again, feeling emotions and sensations more intensely, able to cry again, and even falling in love.  What could have happened, and does it have anything to do with her manipulative creator re-entering her life?

As most of the modern vampire stories do, Pretty Dead selectively interprets vampire mythology, and introduces a new element to shake up an old idea.  The tone of the novel is one of wistfulness, alienation, and desire.  Block is good at writing stories that feel dreamlike.  Her Weetzie Bat books are some of my favourite bright surreal re-imagine-my-world stories, but this one is much more haunting.   I doubt it will get as much notice as the superficial high school vampire series I've been seeing in my library, but it will attract some devoted readers.