As I alluded before, Chapter 2 is essentially just some filler to expand on the character a bit. Betsy’s dying thoughts are basically on how small her life was, with a little bit of bragging for good measure (the character is very much intended to be shallow, mouthy, and a bit dim–though eventually she overdoes it). She thinks about how today she turned the dreaded 30, and it ended with her death. She thinks about how she was a middling student, more focused on winning Miss Congeniality in a beauty pageant, was prom queen or homecoming queen or maybe both, had a brief modeling career before deciding it was way too boring (and a hint of sexual harassment, plus the male models she’d dated were apparently inevitably gay). She reveals she is both a Republican and a member of PETA, complains about her previous workplace and that damned copy-or-fax machine, and being setup on a date with her ex-boss’s racist nephew, and the way she writes it seems to be saying that her last day of life was spent at the office until 5, then off to a failed date with the racist even though last chapter she fully described how she was fired at 9:20am and home before noon, all wrapped up with, “So, a day in the life. My life. What a waste. And now I was done. I never did anything. Not one thing,” closing chapter 2, and onto chapter 3 we go!

Chapter 3, Betsy wakes up confused inside a white coffin with gold accents lined in plush pink satin. She knocks off the top and then notices a blonde woman with interesting gold highlights in a pink suit and faux-leather knockoff shoes, who would be pretty were it not for the pink suit (thus begins her oft-told hatred of pink…cute trick for a book series that usually has pink somewhere or another on the cover) and the garish blue eyeshadow, orange blush, and brown-red lipstick…oh, of course, that’s a mirror. Betsy is infuriated to find the name “Antonia O’Neill Taylor,” aka her stepmother, written inside the cheap shoes…not the least of which because Betsy is obsessed with designer shoes. Ugly designer shoes. So, so so 90s ugly designer shoes. I know this because I’ve started googling the shoes she mentions this time around, and hoo boy…anyway.

Betsy is super pissed that her stepmother put her in pink knowing she hated it, and castoffs knowing that she is a designer whore who never shuts up about them, even later chiding a poor college student for shopping at Target because quality costs and she was able to purchase designer on a secretary salary, blah blah she’s obsessed with shoes, okay? This is important. This is about the only character detail which will never be randomly forgotten by the poorly-edited author.

ANYWAY! She thinks about how devastated her mother (bio-mother, that is) must be, how her dad might take a whole day off work for the funeral, and how her stepmother wouldn’t care. She briefly considers seeking out her family and friends, then decides she must just have been too stupid to stay dead and therefore must be a zombie, and tries to kill herself. Another thing–later in the series she claims to have a complete and utter insane fear of zombies, but that never comes up now when she’s convinced she is one!

She decides the only solution is killing herself, and dives headfirst off the roof of the building, and is then immediately run over again, at least this time with the dignity of it being a garbage truck instead of a gross, disgusting Aztek. A hit-and-run garbage truck!

Thus begins chapter 4. She briefly mentions a variety of ways she attempted suicide, such as drowning herself in the Mississippi–nope, she just hangs out underwater for thirty minutes til she gets bored, grabbing a live power line, drinking a bottle of bleach, stabbing herself in the heart with a butcher knife…eventually she hears some muffled crying, and happens upon a mother and her six-year-old daughter, Justine, being hassled by three hulking men. The mom offers to go with the men and let them do whatever they want to her if they’ll just leave Justine alone, and they tell her that they don’t want her.

Yes, they just so happened to be tourists whose car broke down at four o’clock in the morning (despite the 6 year old) right around a trio of child predators…and a newborn vampire who’s only made herself thirstier for having drank bleach.

Anyway, of course Betsy confronts these assholes, we get our first taste of what a curses-like-a-sailor sassmafrass our heroine is, and she winds up murdering them. Justine’s mom is hysterical, while Justine is super calm and perceptive, and the one to tell Betsy that she is, in fact, a vampire (we are also introduced to the fact Betsy lisps every time her fangs come out). She realizes she was stabbed, but of course it doesn’t hurt…heck, she already stabbed herself in the damned heart earlier that same evening, and the mom gets scared of her vampire teeth and runs off with the way-too-chill six year old.

Betsy wonders just how the fuck she’s a vampire after dying in a car accident–and how she’s a newborn vampire who didn’t attack Justine or her mom, even saved them! And the chapter ends with her daydreaming about finding Colin Farrell to make him a snack, truly conveying how dated these books already are.

Chapter 5 is a little longer, but it’s not really that interesting. It begins with Betsy going into a church and discovering holy items don’t do shit to her either, the janitor starts drooling “you’re pretty” at her over and over until she accidentally bewitches him into falling asleep, then the priest comes out and she explains everything that’s happened up til now. He tells her that god must still love her, regardless of whether she’s undead or not, and while they’re talking he is also beginning to succumb to “you’re pretty” and trying to give her gifts, though he keeps trying to fight it off.

She half-heartedly waves down a passing taxi who–to her surprise–screeches to a halt, u-turns, and picks her up, staring at her in the rearview mirror the whole drive (also hitting mail boxes and driving on curbs and whatever). She accidentally bewitches him into not getting paid for taking her “all the way to Edina,” which she does make sound like a pretty good fare she’s skipping out on, but whatever. She then goes inside her home to discover that her evil stepmother stole all of her designer shoes and her cat is now afraid of her. She cries and then goes to sleep in her bed–which faces East. She leaves the curtains open as one final passive attempt at maybe suicide, deciding she will make a plan tomorrow if she wakes up, and if she doesn’t, well, then that’s taken care of, isn’t it?

UP NEXT: In no certain order we go on to meet Betsy’s family, Betsy’s (only?) friend, and Detective Nick makes his unfortunate return!