Reviewed by Aerrion Reynolds
What does it mean to live forever and still feel like you haven’t figured out who you are? That question, hovering somewhere between existential philosophy and romantic comedy, is the heartbeat of Sam Tschida’s Undead and Unwed. The novel opens not with gothic castles or ominous shadows but with the everyday awkwardness of a woman who has been alive for three centuries and still hasn’t mastered adulthood. Tiffenie Ruba, the heroine, is a vampire who works at a blood bank, lives with her cat, and stumbles through life with the same uncertainty as anyone in their twenties—except she’s been in her twenties for three hundred years. This decontextualized opening sets the stage for a story that is less about supernatural horror than about the persistence of human messiness, even when one is no longer technically human.
The book situates itself firmly within the tradition of paranormal rom coms, a genre that has grown steadily since the late 1990s. If Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary gave us the archetype of the single woman whose life is defined by comic mishaps and yearning for connection, and if What We Do in the Shadows showed us vampires as hilariously ordinary roommates, then Undead and Unwed blends these traditions into something new. Tschida borrows the scaffolding of the romantic comedy—inheritance of a fixer-upper, meet-cute with a Christmas tree farmer, the found-family dynamic—and overlays it with supernatural fiction, where blood banks replace coffee shops and turning your neighbor into a vampire is just another awkward accident. The snowy Vermont town of Valentine could easily be the backdrop of a Hallmark holiday romance, except here the heroine is immortal, perpetually single, and still trying to figure out how to pay rent.
The novel’s charm lies in its cast of characters—the chess pieces on the board—rather than the specific plot of maneuvers. Tiffenie herself is the queen piece, powerful in theory but hilariously ineffective in practice. Heaven, the neighbor accidentally turned into a vampire, is the comic sidekick who complicates everything. Tyrone, the Christmas tree farmer, is a romantic interest, a figure both grounded and symbolic of seasonal warmth. The town of Valentine functions as more than a setting; it is a character, a snowy, picturesque place that mirrors the Hallmark ideal while offering space for supernatural hijinks. And the inherited bed-and-breakfast, dilapidated and in need of repair, is the central metaphor: a fixer-upper both in architecture and in life. By describing these pieces, we see the novel’s architecture without spoiling the moves. The fun lies in watching how these figures interact, collide, and reshape one another.
If one really likes this book—and I do—it is because it asks questions larger than its genre of scaffolding. What does it mean to be perpetually unready for life? How do we reconcile the fantasy of eternal youth with the reality of eternal indecision? Can love, even in its most rom-
com form, be the thing that finally anchors us? Tschida’s novel is not just about vampires dating; it is about the search for identity across centuries, the desire for belonging, and the comic tragedy of never quite getting it right. In this sense, Undead and Unwed is less about supernatural romance than it is about the human condition refracted through supernatural comedy. It reminds us that immortality is not a cure for loneliness, nor is it a guarantee of wisdom. Instead, it is simply more time to wrestle with the same questions we all face.
The book is not flawless. At times, the humor leans heavily on Hallmark parody, which risks feeling repetitive. Some readers may wish for deeper exploration of vampire lore beyond the rom-com scaffolding. Yet these are minor quibbles in a novel that succeeds at what it sets out to do: to entertain, to charm, and to make us laugh at the absurdity of both immortality and modern dating. Tschida’s prose is light and witty, her characters endearing even in their flaws, and her setting both familiar and delightfully skewed. The novel is a small-press gem, the kind of book that feels like it was written with a wink and a smile yet still manages to ask big questions about identity, belonging, and the meaning of love.
In the end, Undead and Unwed is a delightful addition to Quirk Books’ catalog, a story that blends supernatural comedy with romantic warmth. It is a book that reminds us that even three hundred years of existence cannot erase the awkwardness of being human—or undead. By situating itself within the rom-com tradition while asking larger questions about identity and belonging, Sam Tschida has crafted a novel that is both funny and quietly profound. It is not just a vampire rom com; it is a meditation on the persistence of human messiness, the resilience of hope, and the possibility that love, however awkwardly found, might still be the thing that makes eternity bearable.