Title: Road Trip with a Vampire
Series: My Vampires, #3
Author: Jenna Levine
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: September 23, 2025
Length: 416 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance/fantasy
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:
A vampire who can’t remember his past and a witch with secrets of her own hit the road in this zany, cross-country romantic comedy from beloved author Jenna Levine.
Reformed bad witch Grizelda “Zelda” Watson had hoped to never see another vampire again when she slipped away to sunny California for a fresh start. She’d grown tired of them and their nonsense ages ago. But when a vampire with amnesia unexpectedly shows up on her doorstep with a letter from her old friend Reggie, and asks for her help, she can’t say no. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Peter Elliott is tall and gorgeous, looks great in yoga shorts, and has the kind of dark hair and surly expression Zelda’s been a sucker for for hundreds of years.
Peter isn’t completely harmless—he is fanged, after all—but he’s harmless enough, and soon becomes the only person in Zelda’s new life who knows the truth about what she is. If she can help him decipher the cryptic notes in his journal, the only clues to his lost memories, she might as well try before sending him on his way.
But when an alarming message from Peter’s past coincides with a clear sign that Zelda can’t keep running from her own, they embark on a cross-country road trip for answers—only to find what they’re looking for in each other.
Road Trip with a Vampire is the final book in author Jenna Levine’s My Vampires trilogy, and its silly vibe makes this book a fitting wrap-up to a fun, extremely un-serious vampire romance series.
Here, the main character is Zelda, aka Grizelda Watson, aka Grizelda the Terrible — a 400-year-old witch (who appears to be about 30, thanks to witchy immortality) now living in a small Northern California town and running a yoga studio. Zelda’s “terribleness” was less about being scary and more about pulling the craziest pranks she and her vampire buddies could come up with… but after a prank went wrong ten years earlier, she’s left behind her old life and wants nothing more than to enjoy her calm, witch-and-vampire-free life.
All that changes when a gorgeous man shows up at the yoga studio one night. Zelda immediately learns some key facts about him: 1) he’s a vampire; 2) he has amnesia; and 3) he was pushed in her direction by their mutual friend Reggie (the vampire love interest in My Vampire Plus-One, the 2nd book in the series).
Zelda takes pity on Peter and offers him temporary shelter and a job, even though she’d promised herself to keep vampires out of her life. When Peter gets a threatening letter demanding that he show up in Indiana to meet with his employers (whom he doesn’t remember), Zelda decides to go with him on a road trip. They’ll stop at locations mentioned in his journal, the only possession from his former life that he seems to have, to see if anything jogs his memory, and meanwhile, she’ll test the limits and requirements of her magical powers, which have been building up dangerously lately and which she needs to find a way to safely manage.
We both needed to leave town for a while. I had a car, and he needed transportation. And while I could take care of myself if trouble arose while I was away, I couldn’t tear out someone’s throat with my teeth if the occasion called for it. The handy thing about traveling with a vampire was that they could.
What follows is a silly escapade full of strange roadside attractions (singing animatronic chickens are involved), intense sexual attraction, and hints of Peter’s past that may possibly overlap with the history Zelda has tried so hard to leave behind.
The plot of Road Trip with a Vampire is pretty much just what you’d expect — and yes, there are plenty of standard romance tropes, including the ever-popular just-one-room/just-one-bed scenarios.
When Peter’s memories come back and secrets are revealed, there’s both a showdown with bad guys and the obligatory 3rd act breakup — but this is a happy book, so nothing terribly dire actually happens and it all works out in the end. There’s even some goat yoga!
As with the other My Vampires books, the rules are a little loose — which is fine for a book that emphasizes fun over logic. Still, the stickler in me still gets annoyed when a vampire has stubble after a long night and seems to have developed crows-feet. How? Why? Make it make sense!
My other quibble, which has been consistent throughout this trilogy, is that the sex scenes are more explicit than they need to be, and feel jarring in contrast to the otherwise light and breezy tone of the books.
That aside, this book is entertaining and a quick read, and it’s fun to reconnect briefly with characters from the previous books. Road Trip with a Vampire could probably be read as a stand-alone, but I think skipping the earlier books would mean missing out on some of the context and the general “rules” (and I use that term loosely) of the supernatural world of this series.
My recommendation? Start with book #1, My Roommate Is a Vampire, and if you enjoy the campy, silly tone, keep going!
The My Vampires series:
- My Roommate Is a Vampire
- My Vampire Plus-One
- Road Trip with a Vampire
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