The Tear Collector

The Tear Collector by Patrick Jones

"Between hookups, makeups, and breakups, there isn't a day at Lapeer High School without drama turning to trauma turning to tears.

And tears are just as essential as air for Cassandra Gray. She and her family are vampires who thirst for human sorrow, and the energy that they soak in from a good crying jag can keep them fueled up for days.

Anytime a friend needs a shoulder to cry on, Cass is there. Anytime a boyfriend gets too secure, she breaks his heart. Cass's work as a school peer counselor and hospital volunteer also provides the perfect cover and access to her family's energy source. But she is getting tired of all the lies and manipulation--especially now that she's actually fallen in love with a human. Can she bear to betray her family for a chance at happiness and a life lived with joy?"

Originality (5/5): To be honest, I picked up this book because I was in the mood for some sappy vampire-human love story. I got something completely different. Yes, Cassandra is a kind of "vampire"--specifically, an energy vampire. She absorbs human tears. This is the premise that really enticed me to take this book seriously. It takes about twenty or so pages to really get into the book, but once you do, it's a definite page-turner that will keep you up half the night (it certainly kept me up!). The characters are quirky and refreshingly different from the bland macho Twilight-esque personas that have taken over the category of vampire fiction.

Plot (4/5): In terms of plot, The Tear Collector was well-developed and fresh enough to be interesting. It took a common literary theme and twisted it enough that you kept reading--not because you particularly cared about the characters, but more because you just wanted to see what happened.

Characters (3/5): The main character, Cassandra, is not a do-no-wrong heroine that you are meant to instinctively like. She is incapable of feeling love or any emotion like it, and she manipulates the situations around her to suit her and her family's needs shamelessly. Based on this description, a prospective reader may be deterred from reading the book. But don't be fooled. It is exactly this nature that allows for an incredible amount of character transformation throughout the book. Cassandra's nature is what makes her interesting and appealing as a narrator. She provides such a unique and intensely flawed perspective on the cliched goings-on of a regular Michigan high school. The reader will definitely empathize as she breaks out of her shell and finally experiences emotions.

Cassandra's love interest is quite the opposite. A good Catholic boy who loves his grandmother dearly and defends God on a regular basis, Scott Gerard's "mix of shyness and sly comments" fascinates Cassandra. All of her previous boyfriends have loved her for purely superficial reasons, and as a result, she has always thought of boys as disposable items that exist simply as an energy source. But Scott is different. He's not handsome--scruffy and bedraggled would be more appropriate terms to describe him--but he's intelligent and unfailingly kind. Despite all this, I didn't ever find that I particularly liked Scott at all. He was always too nice, too kind-hearted. I found it a bit unbelievable. Maybe I'm prejudiced because I'm a sucker for those devastatingly handsome book heroes, but I felt that Scott had plenty of time in the book to impress me and make up for his lack of surface appeal. He didn't.

The third character was a goth-girl named Samantha. I don't have much to say about her. She's the typical physically and emotionally scarred emo kid who's retreated into a shell and spends her time writing vampire fiction and surfing MySpace. I can see that Jones was probably trying to introduce a common stereotype and develop it into something more, but it just didn't work. I found Samantha whiny, and I couldn't feel anything more than pity towards her. Before Cassandra began her relationship with Scott, Samantha and Scott had been an item. Once again, Jones failed to make the primary relationship in the novel appealing. Throughout the book, I kept on wishing that Samantha would get back together with Scott. Those two outcasts deserved each other.

Romance (2/5): The progression of his and Cassandra's relationship was too fast, too unbelievable. I didn't sense the chemistry between them. In fact, I sensed more tension between Cassandra and her betrothed Alexei, whom the author had created to be the "villain" of the novel. A reader should not be rooting for the heroine to dump the projected "hero" of the book and get together with the creepy distant cousin who kidnaps kids and tortures them...

Writing (4/5): The writing was also unconventional, but in a good way. I enjoyed the modern teen slang Jones threw in there from time to time. The ending, however, was a different story. I know writers like to be deliberately vague when they end a novel because it gives the book an aura of "mystery", but the ending was such that it left the nature of Cassandra's character up for debate. Without spoiling anything, the two possible interpretations of the ending either leave us seeing Cassandra as heartless as she was in the beginning, or they leave us seeing her as more mature and responsible. It definitely affects the entire perception of the book.

Cover (1/5): Eh. Just eh.

Final Ratings: 19/30 = 63.33%

Favorite Quote: "My family finds energy in tears; humanity finds it in love." (p. 259)