Whether you were a fan of the series or not, if you devoured Stephanie Meyer’s uber-popular, movie-spawning series of books (collectively referred to as the Twilight Series), you have likely been left with a gaping wound in your chest now that it’s all over but the filming. “What can possibly meet my need for melodramatic vampire fiction?” you wonder. “What can possibly rinse this foul taste from my brain?” you lament.

Worry no longer.

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Perhaps the most obvious (adult) follow-up is the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, starting with Guilty Pleasures. If you’re looking for more plot with your romance, and a bit more character depth and development (at least for a while), then this is the next step for you.

Anita has much in common with Bella. She is a tough, standoffish character who has serious intimacy issues. Just like Bella, Anita becomes torn between her feelings for a vampire and a werewolf, although Jean-Claude’s “family” isn’t quite as welcoming as The Cullens. Hamilton also explores the idea of soulmates, but in a dramatically different way than Meyers (those orgies I mentioned).

There are some key differences between the two series, which makes this a rational choice for some Twilight readers. For one, Anita is a grownup and freelances for the police department. Goodbye high school, homework, and prom dates and hello crime scenes, forensics, and serial killers. In Anita’s world, the general public is aware of vampires and werewolves (and necromancers and zombies and…) and Hamilton has done an extensive job of painting the world these characters inhabit. Yes, eventually Bella and Edward graduate, but they never really leave high school, if you catch my meaning.

Having said that, I don’t mean to suggest that Anita’s life is without relationship drama. Far from it. All those grownup feelings and situations lead to some extreme personal complications, and Hamilton explores them with abandon. Those grownup feelings are a key difference and a potential deal-breaker for some readers. Where the Twilight teens are chaste enough that the movies could pull off a PG rating if they tried, Guilty Pleasures starts at a decent R-rating and the books skyrocket from there. There is a reason the series is often described as erotic fantasy and why you may want to reconsider presenting them to your niece for her high school graduation. Somewhere around the 12th book, my interest in the series waned as the graphic sex turned gratuitous and started eclipsing all the supernatural intrigue.

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

Let’s just get my personal bias out of the way right now. The first few books of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles are some of my favorite reading material and I have read and reread (and reread) The Vampire Lestat so many times that my sad little paperback copy is disintegrating. Is it the best book I’ve ever read? Certainly not. It’s been 15+ years since I picked it up the first time and I still love it, though. You could read the whole series and start with the first book in the series, Interview with a Vampire, but if you want the most bang for your Twilight buck and you’re short on time, head to my favorite. You’re at risk for coloring your impression of the first book if (when) you go back to read it, but the only thing Interview has in common with Twilight is a moody, melancholy protagonist who stumbles through the book whining about his/her lot in life and never appreciating a thing. (bias, bias, who’s got the bias?)

If you enjoyed the Volturi in Twilight, then you’ll feel right at home with Marius and Those Who Must Be Kept. If the occasional exotic local in the Twilight series was a welcome relief from the daily life in Forks, prepare to be awed. Rice is at her best when she’s immersing her readers in centuries past and far off places, and Lestat’s globe-spanning journey from feudal France to modern day New Orleans showcases this talent without allowing her to be overly self-indulgent.

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Sorry, you’re not here to read about what made Rice a great writer. You’re here for the vampire romance. (But seriously, though, when you’re done with Lestat, go read Cry to Heaven. It’s my favorite non-vamp book of hers).

There’s a subset of Twilight readers who describe the purity and chasteness of Meyer’s characters as “erotics of abstinence”. I’m not here to argue that point, but I will say that those fans will likely be in seventh heaven with Lestat. Beautiful vampires and unresolved sexual tension abound in this series. The only hiccough you may discover with Rice, is that 90% of the characters are male. To me this was irrelevant. I likened the sex-less, gorgeous vampires to genderless angels (and Rice makes this comparison herself throughout the books), but the homoerotic subtext isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The most direct comparison between the Vampire Chronicles and Twilight is that both series are an outlet for the author’s religious and moral viewpoints. Where the Twilight Series is practically a primer for the Mormon views on Celestial marriage (there’s your senior thesis, gals), Lestat’s primary motivation is a very personal quest to understand the nature of good and evil and what, if anything, may await us when this life is over. Both authors use the nature of vampires (immortal, undead, etc) to explore ideas in ways that human characters could not. I was asking the same questions as Rice and Lestat were asking themselves when I found the series, which is one of the primary reasons it has a pedestal in my personal library.

Oh! I almost forgot! If you’ve seen the Pitt-Cruise version of Interview or the painfully butchered Queen of the Damned “adaptation” from 2002 and are thinking “there is no way I’m going to be talked into reading an entire book about that guy!” you should know that Rice’s actual character has very little in common with either of those films. Also, you’ve read Twilight so your standards might be questionable. Just saying.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Wait, what?

A centuries-old novel that has nothing to do with vampires is a good follow up to Twilight?

It’s the best, actually.

Let’s be honest. You don’t care about the supernatural bits. Meyers did everything she could to completely defang the poor guys. They don’t feed off humans. They don’t mope around all brooding and emo (well, except Edward), and the only thing that happens when they hit sunlight is that they get all sparkly.

You’re after the love triangle.

You want the heroine to be a bit smarter and a bit distant than the rest of her family and friends who love her despite not being able to understand her. You want a perfectly proper hero who fights his attraction to her, struggles with the clashes of their very different stations in life, and who ultimately cannot deny his passion. You want the third point of that triangle to be a charismatic gent with a dark secret who is unexplainably at odds with the hero even before the triangle takes shape. You want a collection of supporting characters who are alternately funny, annoying, sweet, dangerous, stupid, etc, etc, to keep you entertained while you wait for the lovers to achieve their inevitable happy ending.

In short, you want Pride and Prejudice. Any or all Austen novels will come close enough to entertain you, but Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s romance is a near-perfect parallel to Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen. I don’t need to spend another two or three paragraphs to convince you. In fact, forget what I said earlier about the Mormon themes in Twilight being your senior thesis. Give that one to your BFF and take this one instead.

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