There is not enough time and too many books to read for me to finish this one. Dull, dull, dull. I haven't too many books that have received the Alex Award for an adult book that's also good for teens, and if this is any indication of what to expect, I doubt I will read anymore.Here's what you get from The Radleys:1. Juvenile adults acting like teenagers. It seems that the entirety of Peter and Helen Radley's problems have to do from their loveless marriage. Get a divorce or get some real proble...

Suburbia, parents and 2 kids living in semi-detached house with a garden. Teen, Rowan has insomnia, rashes and has to wear Factor 60 sunblock; his sister has turned vegan but is now getting really sick; mid-life crisis heading GP dad is always thirsty; and mum holds it all together, as she tries to deny her heady past. Meet the Radleys... oh, and in case I forgot to mention, the parents are yet to tell the kids that they're all vampires! Behind this white picket fence lives a nest of reluctant v...

You've got your suffocating suburbs with white picket fences and book clubs, and you've got your average blood-sucking family. Boom. (bnr. More of a worrying sizzle with a smell of burning flesh.)Nice exploration of the issue (you can clearly see the issue, can't you?), but I could have done with some more in depth character development wrt the kids (who, as always, become overdramatic, simple-minded cardboard slabs when in the hands of a non-YA literary fiction writer) and Peter and less dillyd...

Beautiful writing - nice choice of words! An engaging, original and fun read. "Your instincts are wrong. Animals rely on instincts for their daily survival, but we are not beasts. We are not lions or sharks or vultures. We are civilized, and civilization only works if instincts are suppressed. So do your bit for society and ignore those dark desires inside you."[Vampire?, 'Love and Pain' is an 1895 painting by Edvard Munch, wikipedia.org]"For 17 Orchard Lane is the home of the Radleys, and despi...

Matt Haig is turning into my newest favourite author! I especially love that he is English and that one of the major scenes takes place in a cinema in Thirsk. I always like it when I can say "Been there"! I did not meet any vampires though. Not that I know of anyway.I thought this was a very amusing book with a slightly different take on the vampire life style. I enjoyed our insights into the Radley family and their attempts to live a life without drinking blood. Some of the quotes from The Abst...

Let's get one thing straight here, shall we? This isn't a book about vampires.Okay, yes. It's a book which has vampire characters. I won't dispute that. But the book itself...that's not what it's about. Not the way I see it.This is, instead, a book about family and relationships and love and how we love the people who hurt us, and hurt the people we love. It's a book about the blurry lines between our intrinsic nature and desires the way that we cope with those things. And it's about how you pla...

Rating: 3 starsPlot: 2.5Characters: 3Writing style: 3.5Matt Haig's "The Radleys' - is a story about at first sight ordinary small town family that happen to be abstaining vampires. Their lives are changed forever after one bloody night - 17 years of secrets starts coming out.It's not your typical book about vampires. I really enjoyed this fresh take on what it would really mean to be one. I wasn't the biggest fan of the plot and characters development though. The beggining of the book was very p...

Excellent little story of family secrets and what happens when a tightly woven lie begins to unravel.In this story, Peter and Helen Radley have moved out to a pleasant village in the English country-side to raise their children, Rowan and Clara. They wanted to escape their wild life in London and live a quiet, ordinary life with their children and live a peaceful, normal life... Well, as normal a life as you can have, when you are an Abstainer, a "non-practicing" vampire.Their quiet life takes a...

Yes, it's true. It IS another vampire book. But with some interesting new ideas about "abstaining" vampires (they don't drink blood anymore--just eat a whole lot of rare meat) and mixing in with society that keep it fun and fresh and the pages flying by. It's a British novel, so there are some interesting quirks there, as well. The basic premise is that two abstaining vampires--one a born vampire, one converted--have become your basic suburban couple with two teenagers--two vampire teenagers who...

“I can control myself. Look, for God’s sake. Look at everyone. Everyone represses everything. Do you think any of these ‘normal’ human beings really do exactly what they want to do all the time? ‘Course not. It’s just the same. We’re middle-class and we’re British. Repression is in our veins.”The Radleys is the third adult novel by British author, Matt Haig. Another novel featuring abstaining teenaged vampires? Well, yes, but this is Matt Haig’s creation, set in a North Yorkshire village: a worl...

"Twilight" eat your heart out : )In this immensely satisfying read Matt Haig presents us with the Radleys- a typical middle class English family that just happens to want to drink your blood. But like good Britons they are fighting against their baser instincts and leading an upstanding existence in a quaint country town. Having recently read Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" the portrait of the, yet again, typically repressed Brits was especially on point. But more than poking fun at the English s...

I thought I was tired of the vampire genre, but obviously not, not if the subject is treated as interestingly as in Matt Haig's The Radleys.The Radleys is about a well-off suburban family living in England whose Bible is the Abstainer's Handbook. Helen and Peter have chosen to eschew blood so that they can live as a "normal" family. Their children, Clara and Rowan, are pale, anemic, and prone to skin irritations. They have no idea they're part of a vampire clan, until Clara is attacked one night...

Another vampire book that I actually like. The Radleys is not an action-packed vampire story. It's more of a tale of change, love, family and acceptance. It isn't what I had expected but I am good with what I got.As a preview, The Radleys is about the abstaining vampires i.e. The Radleys obviously, whose one member of their family (Clara) has caught up in a murder. The story evolves there: the siblings, (Clara and Rowan) learning the truth about themselves; Helen, their mother, doing her best as...

This vampire novel about suburban repression has a big, bloody heart. It didn't quite strike me as profound as Haig's The Humans, but it still managed to shine the same kind of light on the darker side of middle class complacency. This seemed like a fresh take on a classic horror monster. Very cool

The Radleys is a different look at the young adult Vampire situation that today’s literature has going on. The Radleys are a mundane young couple with 2 teenage children living in a cute exceptionally boring village. Helen Radley is the mum, she seems to only tolerate her husband, has a bit more patience for the children and little to no interest in the emotional sanity of her family. To be honest Helen seems a bit distracted. Peter Radley, the Dad and Doctor. He is sharp and useless and come...