They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but they should also say don’t judge a book by its author. Midnight Walking, a new teen comic-horror novel, is written by a 17-year-old Beijing international high school student. Since the publisher makes this fact part of the book’s marketing campaign, it’s hard to sit down and really enjoy the read, as you’re constantly assessing whether the writing is good considering the author’s age, or just damn good anyway.

Midnight Walking, penned by Dulwich College Beijing’s Kathryn Chua, is part Dracula fable, part teenage angst, part sexual fantasy, and part gothic macabre. It tells the story of Lucy Pine, a lonely, insecure, needy teenager—how much of her is Chua, one wonders—who is haunted by her older brother’s mysterious disappearance involving a woman with “skin as black as midnight walking.” Dracula, in this case a vengeful vampire called Cyrus, arrives on the scene as a scraggy crow that smacks into Lucy’s window one night as she’s fretting over her weight. He pops up later as a main love interest who seduces her with kisses and a little late night loving. “Could it be that you’d very much like to be abducted?” he asks her at one point. This should strike a chord in many a young girl’s (and old girl’s) heart. Parents need not fear, however. Midnight Walking is more PG than R-rated, more innocent fantasy than gothic porn.

The book works because it’s convincing. Chua writes in the voice of a teenager because she is one. Life is lived fleetingly in the superlatives which only 16-year-olds—and accomplished adult authors such as Jonathan Safran Foer—can put down on paper. At the same time, her prose is tempered by a maturity which the publisher attributes to a private coach in creative writing. Our precocious author, Hong Kong-born and schooled in Malaysia until she came to Beijing five years ago, is also musically inclined and has penned some tunes to go with the book. Listen to them at www.kathrynchua-midnightwalking.com.

Midnight Walking is more funny than scary. Chua doesn’t shy away from the gory and macabre, but piles on the teen humor. Feeling vulnerable, Lucy walks into her parent’s room without knocking one night looking for reassurance. Her father’s in bed, reading, her mother’s rendered immobile in a cucumber face mask. “Oh well,” she thinks to herself. “She should probably be glad they are not having sex or something else gross.”

The hit American TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer first melded teenage growing pains with vampires, monsters, friendship and sexual attraction. Fans of the show will spot similarities with Chua’s novel, and with the hit Twilight series. Chua says she first thought of the idea for the novel when she was 13 after having read Stephenie Meyer’s vampire love fantasies, except she wanted to bring back the nastiness. “[My book’s] supposed to be a comment on today’s horror novels, how they are trying to glamorize ... for the sake of being edgy they create a stalking, sparkling vampire that follows girls around and makes them dependent on him,” she says. “We should go back to the good old days when vampires were evil.”

Kathryn Chua, Midnight Walking, Blacksmith Books, ¥80