Donaya Haymond spins a wonderfully sweet, sad and funny story in Bite Me. We all have family secrets that we want to hide from the world, but sometimes you have to tell someone when things just get too bad. If you’re lucky the person you find to tell will have the same or similar family secret to hide and sharing it will make it all the sweeter. Haymond makes this tale of family secrets an interestingly sweet one.

Dianne has a family secret…her mother is a werewolf and her father is a vampire. Being a teen in high school doesn’t help. Everyone already thinks she is weird. The kids are always talking about her father and spinning tall tales about how he must be either an alcoholic, druggy or something else since he doesn’t go out a lot at night. Things get worse when she slaps a classmate that is taunting her severely about her father one day. But this time she seems to shift to feral form but only her hand.

Her father seems to be feeling tired lately and having migraines. Can vampires get migraines? While finding a butcher shop he happens upon a fellow vampire, Nat Silver, who also happens to be a doctor. Dianne’s father suggests to his family that the doc look at her so maybe they can find out if there is anything that can be done for her with the partial shifting. The doc might also be able to help with his problem. When Nat gets back the blood work he took from Dianne’s father they learn that he has HIV and that it had to be contracted from a human he bit long ago. Dr. Silver tests Dianne and her mother to just to be on the safe side. Did the mom and daughter also contract the disease?

Feeling she needs to tell someone she tells her new neighbor Matt who is the only other person in school who has not alienated her. But will she ever be able to tell him the other family secret? She has been hearing weird sounds lately coming from near the house. Does a neighbor have a secret? Is it Matt’s family or his uncle that just moved in with them? What is going to happen with her and her family?