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Motherless Child is Yet Another Vampire Story, and doesn't add much new or original to vampire lore, which is actually a good thing. Vampires are nasty predatory fiends and when you get turned into a vampire, you are constantly hungry and fighting to hold onto your humanity. That's the way I like my vamps.

Sophie and Natalie are basically "trailer trash" - a couple of besties who both got knocked up and are now working low-end retail and living in a trailer park in North Carolina. When a musician known as "The Whistler" shows up at their local honkie-tonk, they think a little bit of excitement and stardom is touching their dreary lives. They wake up naked, bloody, and hungry.

The Whistler is, of course, a vampire, and for his own reasons, he decided to turn both these chicks. He is obsessed with Natalie, and turned her best friend as a sort of afterthought. Natalie and Sophie both figure out what's happened to them pretty quickly. Natalie returns home, tells her mother (another single mother working at a Waffle House) to run away and not let her find her. Her mother, without fully realizing what has happened, immediately realizes that Natalie is dead serious, and does as she says.

The rest of the book is a chase between The Whistler, Natalie, Sophie, and Natalie's mother, who has Natalie and Sophie's children. Natalie's mother is one of the best characters, as a serious and hard-working woman who's basically a case study in broken dreams and sacrificed futures, fiercely protective of her daughter, and who also knows when to let go. The Whistler is creepy and predatory and a classic master vampire, but it's Mother who steals the spotlight as the Big Bad.

Well-written and with good characterization, but I still found the story lacked a real wow factor or enough excitement to make me eager to pick up the next book (this is the first in a trilogy). As vampire stories go this is a good one, and if you want a deft portrayal of working class single mothers, the author clearly knows the milieu. There is plenty of violence and gore. But ultimately it's just another vampire story.