There's no place like home, they say.
"Hello, I'm Nina Parker…and I'm an alcoholic."
For Nina, it's not the weighty admission ... read full description
"Hello, I'm Nina Parker…and I'm an alcoholic."
For Nina, it's not the weighty admission ... read full description
reviews
Apr 28, 2010
Maryann
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Nina, a wife and mother, became an alcoholic, and is trying to give up alcohol and win back her family. In the midst of her battle with alcohol she lost her family, her job, her marriage, and after alienating everyone she ever cared about she's finally trying to change her life. She makes the difficult decision to move back home to a small town, with her younger sister who is the sheriff. Her angry teenage daughter, Meagan, has to come visit her during school vacation. She's upset about having t
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Dec 03, 2009
April
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Nina Parker is a woman experienced in failure and every fiasco can be traced back to one thing—the bottle. Her husband has left her and taken custody of their two kids. Thanks to her own negligence, she’s lost her job as a veterinarian. She’s a worthless alcoholic, or is she?
Sober again, no one has faith she’ll be able to pull the pieces of her life back together. Not even Nina. The thirst is too strong. Every moment is another challenge to overcome, another need to say “no”.
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Nov 20, 2009
Jennifer
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I really liked this book. Not only was it a vampire story (which I'm really starting to love those) but it was an adult vampire story with a great story line! It kept my attention and I got really pulled into the story. Nina, the main character, is an alcoholic who's all but lost her family. I've never really known an alcoholic, but I'm sure that the struggles Nina faced are all too common. I really liked Nina, she'd made some mistakes in her life but she was really working on turning things aro
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Nov 16, 2009
Laurie
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I've always liked vampire books, so when I got the opportunity to review this book for Waterbrook/Multnomah, I jumped at the chance to see how a Christian author would handle this subject.
In THIRSTY, Nina Parker is a woman at a crossroads. As a teenager, she underwent a terrifying event that haunted her ever since, though she doesn't clearly remember it. Now an alcoholic, she has lost the custody and the love of her daughter, Meagan, and her ex-husband wants no part of her. But More...
In THIRSTY, Nina Parker is a woman at a crossroads. As a teenager, she underwent a terrifying event that haunted her ever since, though she doesn't clearly remember it. Now an alcoholic, she has lost the custody and the love of her daughter, Meagan, and her ex-husband wants no part of her. But More...
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Oct 14, 2009
Jill
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Alcoholic Nina Parker has lost everything. But she’s just completed her ninety days of rehab and is ready to try and put her life back together. She doesn’t know if her ex-husband will ever forgive her or consider mending their relationship. So she takes her teenage daughter to her childhood home to try and rebuild that relationship as well as the one with her parents. But there are horrors in her past she isn’t ready to face and a murderer loose in town. Can she deal with all this and stay sobe
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Oct 15, 2010
K
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This wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't what it claimed to be, vampire fiction or Christian fiction. While the writer is a Christian author, it didn't have the overarching Christian themes throughout the book that most Christian authors do. If the preachesness nauseates you, then you will probably enjoy this book for its looser themes of redemption. However, for the average Christian fiction reader, you may come away disappointed. Twilight has as many religious elements.
As vampire f More...
As vampire f More...
Nov 12, 2009
Lynn
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I have to admit that I am not a fan of Vampire books, but I have read other books by Ms. Bateman so I thought it can’t be too bad. And was I ever correct. This book grabbed me from the prologue to the very last page. It’s a book that I could not put down. If you are a fan of the fully fanged, blood seeking killer vampire books like so many of them on the market today, you will not find that in this book.
Nina Parker’s life was in shambles since a youngster. With an alcoholic father, More...
Nina Parker’s life was in shambles since a youngster. With an alcoholic father, More...
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Jan 19, 2011
Kristen
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I really enjoyed Thirsty but not because of the paranormal element. I enjoyed the mother daughter story. Nina is an alcoholic who looses everything. When she hits rock bottom, she enters rehab. Thirsty is a great story of one womens journey to clean up her life and write all the wrongs that she has caused. When I finished reading this book I loved it. Not because of the Vampires, they had a part in the story but to me they weren't the main part. It was the story of Nina and her daughter Meg that
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Mar 17, 2010
Rachel
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I won't write the synopsis from the back of the book because it doesn't really tell you anything as to what the book's about. I wondered though because of the cover, so I looked it up. Apparently it's a Christian vampire story that is mainly about a recovering alcoholic woman. Yah. Sounds eventful. I wonder how she pulls off writing about two controversial topics in Christian fiction; Alcoholism and vampires. Especially the latter.
Thirsty is basically about a recovering alcoho More...
Thirsty is basically about a recovering alcoho More...
Feb 22, 2010
Clare
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When I first started this "vampire" book, I had no idea that it would encompass God and redemption. I had read the four books in the Twilight series and thought that author Tracey Bateman had merely jumped on board the vampire train and written another book in that genre.
Thirsty is much more than a vampire book. It talks about the pains of addiction and family secrets. It explores the issues of free will vs. determinism. Are we free to make choices about behavior or are More...
Thirsty is much more than a vampire book. It talks about the pains of addiction and family secrets. It explores the issues of free will vs. determinism. Are we free to make choices about behavior or are More...
Dec 28, 2010
Janice
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I was first attracted to this book because it is set in the Ozarks, where I live, but what a weird twist! This book was billed as "Christian Fiction", which I sometimes read, if something about the story intrigues me. I thought the "Thirsty" of the title referred to the alcohol addiction of the lead character, and it did, but also introduced into the story was a vampire, who had lived in the Ozarks for hundreds of years, and who was trying to reform, drinking the blood onl
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May 14, 2011
Lyndi
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Never thought I would be able to say that I read a Christian vampire story! It sounds like an oxymoron, But the author pulled it off! I wondered at first what the thirsty was going to be about, a vampire? Then the alcoholic line came in with Nina, so I ditched the vampire idea, then that came back into the story. Bateman seems to be a writer that goes beyond the typical genre and is able to explore many. I teally enjoy her style, and this one was a great way to be the alcoholic and the vampire t
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Dec 04, 2009
Stormi(Books, Movies, Reviews. Oh my!)
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Thirsty is not your ordinary vampire novel, as a matter of fact, it really isn’t about the vampire. Its more about Nina, and how she is trying to get her life back together. She practically has to drag her teenage daughter to Abby Hills with her for a week. Nina had no clue about Markus being a vampire through most of the book. Its not a vampire love story, its more of a redemption story.
I think Tracey Bateman was really using the lore of the vampire in comparison to the addic More...
Mar 01, 2010
Christy
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A really quick read. Alcoholic mom goes to her home town to get her life together after getting out of rehab. She has a lot of baggage (duh) and is also trying to reconnect with her teenage daughter. For some reason, the author decided to throw in a vampire next door and a serial killer. Very mixed bag of characters. I think if the author had not tried to be three different kind of books all at once, it would have been much better. I would have enjoyed a book about Nina (the alcoholic mom)
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Nov 05, 2010
Candice
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Very intriging! I loved the take on vampires. Different, but believable. Are there really Vampires amoung us?
Nina's addiction was camparable to Marcus' addiction. They were different, but had the same effect when tempted. Great mother daughter story line, Nina trying to gain back her daughter love, daughter being a rebelious teen, mother wanting to give daughter space because she didn't want to push her. I was able to relate to the characters. God was there through it all. He gives More...
Nina's addiction was camparable to Marcus' addiction. They were different, but had the same effect when tempted. Great mother daughter story line, Nina trying to gain back her daughter love, daughter being a rebelious teen, mother wanting to give daughter space because she didn't want to push her. I was able to relate to the characters. God was there through it all. He gives More...
Apr 01, 2010
Tammie
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This is sort of a vampire book, but mostly a book about addiction. It was interesting the way the writer paralleled alcohol addiction to the vampires thirst for blood. Don't read this story expecting there to be a vampire romance though. I would have liked for the vampire aspect of the book to have been a bit more fleshed out, so that I could have cared about him just as much as I came to care about the main character. It almost felt like two separate books that were interwoven into one story. I
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Jan 23, 2010
Sandra
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Just bought this yesterday at the closing of Walden Books in the mall... and got 65% off. Which was the clincher. LOL! Didn't even realize what I got would be so good. An impulse buy really. I can't say away from a bargin and that coupled with books is just dangerous around me. So I started this book at around 12:30pm and just couldn't put it down and then finished around 8:30pm. Took me about 6hrs to read only stopping for food, drink and restroom breaks. LOL! I thought the story was sad
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Jan 06, 2011
Jessica R.
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The minute I began reading Tracey's book, I found the parallel between the thirst of a Vampire and Nina's thirst for alcohol. This isn't a Christian Twilight and there is no real gore in this book. Not like you might expect in reading a book about vampires. I should know, I've read a million.
Tracey writes in her section to the readers that she hopes this book glorifies God. It does. It's a deep dive into alcoholism and the effects on family, friends and even self. I wondered when I s More...
Tracey writes in her section to the readers that she hopes this book glorifies God. It does. It's a deep dive into alcoholism and the effects on family, friends and even self. I wondered when I s More...
Feb 15, 2010
Chrissy
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This is a want-to-be read. I guess it is a vampire novel, but all the vampire stuff was, well, stupid. It had a good story. This women had a major drinking problem, lost her job, family, ect. Moved back home after reab. Trying to rebuild her life. That would be a good story by it self but then she meets this guy that is a vampire and it just takes a bad turn. The author said she was trying to write a novel that would "glorify God." Ok vampires glorify God? Whatever floats you bo
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Nov 20, 2009
Clockstein
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Thirsty by Tracey Bateman is not exactly Twilight for Christians. Nina Parker is struggling with her newfound sobriety after years of alcohol abuse that has destroyed her family. Divorced and without custody of her two children, she returns to the hometown she abandoned seventeen years ago. Daughter Meaghan is going with her, which doesn't please Meggie one bit, to help repair the damaged mother/daughter relationship. Their recovery is pushed to the back burner when a series of graphically bruta
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May 01, 2011
Amanda
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Tracey Bateman's Thirsty was a vampire tale that I enjoyed primarily for its well fleshed-out characters and their relationships than for the vampire. The novel is primarily about alcoholic Nina Parker's struggle to rebuilt her shattered family, and less about the "250-year-old desire that rages like wildfire" advertised in plot summary.
To be blunt, the vampire subplot bites. But not in a good way.
The prologue (I normally skip them) was intriguing, and sets th More...
To be blunt, the vampire subplot bites. But not in a good way.
The prologue (I normally skip them) was intriguing, and sets th More...
Feb 05, 2011
TinasBookReviews
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Nina Parker’s demons live in a bottle of Brandy. Alcohol has taken over her life and the addiction has separated her from everyone and everything she loves. Divorced, on shaky ground with her kids and a Veterinarian career flushed down the drain; Nina finds herself in rehab. After the court ordered stint there, she is leaving sober and moving back to her home town of Abby Hills. The Hills have secrets though and something is lurking in the dark corners.....
Every hot selling book late More...
Every hot selling book late More...
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Nov 18, 2009
Nely
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I agreed to review this book because I was intrigued to see how vampires would fit into a Christian novel. And although the vampire subplot was well done, Nina's struggle with substance abuse was just so much more gripping. Thirsty is a compelling story of how substance abuse can wreck a family, but with strength, love and the will to overcome this addiction, one can be a better person in the end. Ms. Bateman's characters are so real and full of life. You feel as if their struggle is yours, as i
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Nov 17, 2009
Margaret
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While reading this book I came across several reviews. Most of which are extreme opposites in their opinions. Some people were wanting a Christian Twilight, which I actually take offense to since I found so many Christian elements with in that story itself, but that is a conversation for another day. The only similarity here to that saga itself is the idea of a "vegetarian vampire", one who finds resentment in the idea of harming an innocent human. Other people think it is outrageous t
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Mar 31, 2010
Jan
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I can't remember how I managed to put this book on my reading list at the public library. I must have read a review. Parts of the book were written in an interesting style and the main character is an alcoholic 90 days sober who goes back to return to Abbey Hills Missouri during spring break with her angry teenager. I felt the alcholic urges were well written but this is a Christian publisher and this is a modern vampire story. I didn't like the mix of ideas, much. It often was disjointed
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Mar 19, 2010
Brittany
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I found Thirsty by Tracey Bateman to be a very good book, but be warned it is not a full-blown vampire novel which is very misleading. The only vampirism is near the end and when a character tells a story. This is a story about about Christian redemption and coming back around towards God. It's Christian lit that misrepresents itself as a vampire story. I gave it 4/5 for that misrepresentation but otherwise a very good read. It's not something I'll re-read but it's okay for wasting a bit of tim
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Dec 14, 2009
Kitty
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I don't understand how this book got good reviews. There was really no plot until the last third of the book, and it was a poor plot. The characters were boring and ridiculous, especially the vampires. The flashbacks and changes in point of view bothered me. While they were mostly relevant to the story, they were thrown in randomly and not integrated into the narrative. I also hated the intermittent text messaging "dialogue." I would not read this book again or recommend it to an
Oct 15, 2009
Wow. This book was not what I expected it to be. I am very disappointed that Tracey Bateman decided to go with a Vampire book. It's such a trendy theme and she's such a fabulous author. I have always loved her books, until now. However, the book was very well written. The other characters were wonderful. The story line was catching but why the vampires? If I had known that's what the book contained I would not even have bought it. Hopefully this doesn't become her new series....
Jun 29, 2010
Allison
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This book surprised me on so many levels. Namely, because it was good. If the fact that this book is about an alcoholic mother as she seeks to start over again, find God, and maneuver her way out of the endearment of the town vampire doesn't scare you off (as it almost did me), I think you will find it to be at least somewhat enjoyable. I did, which can be attested to by the fact that I got hopelessly lost more than once while listening to it and even pulled over for going 15 miles over the spee
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Nov 08, 2009
Sheila
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I read this book in just a couple of evenings. I loved the way that the title of the book has a double meaning. The book was so engrossing that the second night or reading I was awake until 2 in the morning. This was the first book I have read by this author but it will not be the last. Thanks again Ms. Bateman for a great read and I can't wait to share this book with my daughter who loves to read as much as I do.
