I found out recently that I wasn’t the only 12 year old girl obsessed with what some poor mother called “the vampire books”… Seeing as I’m not 12 anymore and I still have a thing for vamps, I think that some girls don’t just “grow out of it.”

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I devoured all of Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino—at least all of it that I could find in English.

VK is about an interesting boarding high school called Cross Academy that caters to “Day Class” students (regular humans) and “Night Class” students (vampires), complete with Sun Dorm and Moon Dorm. (Can you guess which class stays in which dorm?) Day and Night students aren’t really supposed to interact, since the school is an experiment in human/vamp co-habitation, and they don’t except when classes change at around 4 PM every day.

Enter Yuki Cross, daughter of the headmaster, and Zero Kiryu, Yuki’s childhood best friend. These Day Class students are the official “guardians” of the school and keepers of the Night Class’ secret. Oh, right, I forgot to mention: no one in the Day Class knows that the Night Class is made up of vampires. Except for Yuki and Zero, Day students just think that Night students are older and cooler… which they are, if you like vamps.

Then, there’s Kaname Kuran. He’s the unofficial (or official?.. it’s unclear) leader of the Night Class and seems to have a serious thing (if you know what I mean) for Yuki, though for a long time no one but him knows why. And he really does not like Zero at all, so Yuki spends a lot of her time breaking up tiffs between the two. Therein lies the love triangle, which, once revealed, is the foremost plot device in the manga.

Though eternally sexy, the Night Class isn’t exactly the epitome of upstanding citizenry; there are quite a few shady shenanigans going on behind the main plot, most of which involve killing nefarious vamps or biting unsuspecting Day Class students. Therefore, with the love triangle and the Night students doing their thing, the Day Class students are sort of the boring ones. I mean, wouldn’t you think they’re boring after dealing with all the centuries-old drama?

ShojoBeat has given VK a rating of “OT” for “older teen” because it gets into some weird familial stuff and tends to be sexier in general than most shojo mangas just because it has vampires—and everyone knows vamps ooze sex. If you, like me, can’t get enough of “the vampire books” regardless of their actual believability, then Vampire Knight is for you. You can get the first four volumes in English now, and the fifth pre-order.