In case you know nothing about me, you know that I have an obvious bias for anything written by Scott Westerfeld. He could write the nutrition facts on the back of cereal box and they'd be the best nutrition facts I'd ever read. 
 So, let's be honest--if not for Westerfeld's name plastered on the cover, I probably wouldn't have cared about this book. Vampires, yawn. But these aren't your normal vampires. In fact Cal, our protagonist, doesn't act like a vampire. Yeah, he eats vast quantities of meat and has super-human strength. But from the outside, he seems like a normal guy. 
 Which he's not, obviously. 
 But the thing is, he doesn't remember how he became a vampire. In this version of NYC, all you have to do is sleep with the wrong person, and bam, instant blood-sucker. But Cal was a freshman in college, out on the town, and may have been a little drunk at the time. 
 So we're traipsing around NYC trying to find this girl, and we discover all kinds of hidden secrets. Some "parasite-positives," like Cal, live almost-normal lives. Some, like the girls he accidentally infected, turn into blood-sucking monsters. But why? 
 I also may have this thing for tales in New York City and characters who crawl around subways and secret subterranean lairs. But that's just me. 
 I have to find myself a copy of book two.