The author expertly uses vampirism to make a very human point. This is not a vampire book, although the Radley family are all vampires. I've read fiction books in the past where it seems obvious that the author had written a perfectly normal book and their editor said "Vampires are popular, add a vampire to your story." So they do, but it adds nothing to the plot and just gets in the way. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain - and lose - when we deny our appetites. The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara's trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking - and disturbingly satisfying - act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have for seventeen years been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan.
Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative.
They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys.
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