Elsewhere

Gabrielle Zevin

Scale of 1 - 10: 6.5
Pros: Well-written, with a good, thoughtful story

Cons: No explanation for why people in Elsewhere live their lives in reverse, which seems like a gimmick

My take:
Zevin has a good grasp of teen angst, and I like her take on what life - that we are here to live and learn, and that hanging on to the past does no one any good.  I like that.  What I don't like is the lack of explanation for why people "live backwards" once they arrive in Elsewhere.  It just makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  If the point of it is to learn in some manner which you couldn't if you aged normally, then it would be good to know that.  

It may be that my main problem with that aspect of how Elsewhere is portrayed lies in the fact I do not believe in reincarnation, but I think it will be extremely off-putting to anyone who has very strong opinions about the afterlife.  It seems to me the reader will need to maintain an open mind on that subject, and some readers' religious beliefs may preclude that, which is a shame, as it really is a lovely story which caused me to become teary-eyed on more than one occasion.

There are gentle lessons to be learned in the pages of Elsewhere, if readers can set aside their religious beliefs and just go with Liz's story, which is about both growing up and coming to terms.  I recommend it for all ages.

Snarklet: Fly on the Wall

E. Lockhart

Oral sex references. On page 5. I'm still trying to get past that.

The Poison Apples

Lily Archer

Scale of 1-10: 6.5
Pros:Strong female leads, enough conflict to make it interesting and unpredictable, decent character development, and solid writing all make this a book both teens and tweens can read and enjoy, though I'd only recommend it for tweens if they read above their level. Moms who vet their teens' reading can also rest assured this is a healthy read.
Cons:Archer chooses to write in the first person from different points of view, and while I find nothing wrong with that, all three girls sound pretty much alike, despite coming from very different backgrounds and being of different ethnicities and ages. Her geeky, younger character from the sticks sounds exactly like the affluent hipster with literary star parents, who sounds very much like the trendy, nouveau riche Beverly Hills daughter of an Indian heart surgeon. Had Archer given her characters each their own distinct voice, this would have been a much better and stronger novel. It's still a good one, but it could have been much better, and it's a shame Archer missed the boat.

Synopsis: Basically, the plot boils down to three young girls whose fathers have recently remarried, to stepmothers who are not the sorts of women many of us would appreciate as a parent, step or otherwise. Lives are upheaved, conflict ensues, and each of the girls ends up either choosing to go or being shipped off to boarding school, where they all eventually run into each other and plan revenge on the stepmonsters who have absconded with their formerly happy lives and paternal relationships.


My take: Despite a lack of strong, individual voice for each girl, Archer tells a good yarn and weaves the girls' stories and lives together well. I could see each character and the people in their lives clearly in my head, and nothing about the story was too horrendously outlandish, penguins notwithstanding. I liked that lessons were learned and the characters all grew and developed as the book progressed. There's no Mean Girl Syndrome or sexual conquest in the book, but there is plenty of Girl Power, and the story stresses healthy relationships. Archer left room for a sequel, and if she writes one, I will most likely read it. Despite what seems to be a deploring trend in first novels these days, The Poison Apples is a solid, dependable read, and much better than most teen fiction currently sitting on the shelves at your local Big Chain Bookstore.

You can find Lily Archer on MySpace.

Bras & Broomsticks

Sarah Mlynowski

Scale of 1-10: 2
Pros: Mlynowski's sentences do not suck, and she does a decent job of setting scene and showing her characters to the reader.
Cons: Mlynowski actually plagiarizes Spiderman (yes, the comic book superhero) and gives us a main character who is not only shallow, self-absorbed, immature, and stupid, but arrogant about it. As well, the implausible device of a high school "fashion show" in which everything has to be choreographed and danced a la the Corny Collins Show drove me up the wall, not to mention the incredibly predictable outcome.

Synopsis: 14-year-old Rachel wants 4 things out of life: popularity, fashion, hot guys, and boobs, and she isn't much concerned with earning them. So when she finds out her younger sister is a witch, she immediately begins scheming to use it to her advantage. Despite repeated and very stern warnings from the girls' mother (who naturally used to be a witch but decided to forgo her powers years ago), Rachel convinces her little sister Miri to put a spell on her so that she can dance and be in the fashion show her high school puts on every year. A more lame device does not exist in the entire annals of teen fiction, but that's what we're stuck with, so here we go. And on a personal note, I would like to say that a) I am very tired of books written in the first person, and b) I will never again purchase any book whose cover proclaims it "Screamingly funny," courtesy of Kirkus Reviews. Those Kirkus folks obviously have painfully low standards and a vastly differing definition of "funny" than the one I use.

My take: OMG, how did the totally awesome sparkly green suede shoes my mom told me I could not have end up on my feet? I thought I wore my crappy Docs to school today - how weird is that? You know what, I don't care; I wanted these shoes more than life itself - or maybe big boobs - and now they're mine! If I gave much thought as to why, that'd stress out the few brain cells I have that have not yet atrophied from non-use, so nevermind. This is my 2nd best friend, Tammy. She uses scuba diving hand gestures for everything, which is totally not weird and does not make her a social outcast in high school, at all. I'll just borrow Tammy's phone to thank my mom for buying me the shoes even though she said I couldn't have them, and we couldn't afford them, and even though I can't remember actually putting them on at any point in the day today, and Tammy has never seen them before in her life. To any normal teen, that might send up a red flag, but you know what? I totally deserve to have these shoes, so I don't care.

Oh, man, my mom says I have to come home right now, so I won't get to go have pizza with all the cool kids. One of them invited a friend who invited a friend who invited a friend who invited Tammy, so we're in! Only I can't go, because my stupid mother said I have to come home. My very, very best friend, Jewel - the one I call Bee-Bee, for Best Buddy, which totally isn't annoying to read at all - is one of the cool kids now, but she totally blew me off when she became one, and we never hang out anymore. This was totally my chance to use Tammy to get close to Jewel - and all the other cool kids, of course, of which there are many, many superhot guys, one of whom I deludedly tell myself is going to take me to Spring Fling this year. So as you can see, I really need to go have pizza and pretend I'm a cool kid too. Too bad my mom is so unreasonable.

So like, I get home, and it turns out my little sister Miri is a witch, and she magicked up the shoes for me. Awesome. My mom is a witch too, which totally sucks, because all this time she's been making me study and stuff, I could have had excellent grades, clear skin, trendy and expensive clothing, fabulous hair, and boobs. I really want all of those (except for the grades part, really, because what's the point of that?), so I'm really mad that not only does she expect me to get all of them the old-fashioned way, but she forbade Miri from getting them for me either. Something about how "with great power comes great responsibility," the laws of the universe, and rule of three or something, blah blah blah. Doesn't she realize that only losers do things the old-fashioned way? Jeez! I am so mistreated. You know what? I'll con Miri into doing them for me, anyway. She totally owes me on accounta I'm such a wonderful, caring big sister. I'll guilt her into doing it for me. And while we're at it, we'll break up my dad and his new fiance, whom we both hate. What good is magic, if you can't totally use it for personal gain? Consequences, schmonsequences. Who does my mother think she is?

So, cool: I got Miri to cast a spell on me, and now I can dance! Yay! She refused to do a boob spell, but I'll get her to do one later. Look at all that junk in my trunk! Watch it jiggle and move and shimmy and shake! I can moonwalk! I can dip and vogue, and I don't even have to practice or try or anything! I rule! I tried out for the fashion show my school puts on every year, and I won a place! Now Jewel will have to pay attention to me again and stop calling that other girl in the fashion show her Bee-Bee. I'm her Bee-Bee, darn it, not that cow who actually has to practice dancing. Shuh. Oo, and boys are talking to me! Hot, cute, popular boys! It's the Spring Fling for me, baybee! All I have to do is break up my dad's wedding, which should be pretty easy, now that I've convinced Miri we should do it. Or rather, she should do it, since she's the one with the power, and I'm way too busy with all my new, popular friends and dance rehearsals to bother helping. I know I promised, but what I want is more important, and anyway, I have a dance to cajole an invite to, and pizza to eat with the cool kids. My little sister likes books and learning and working hard, so it's not like she has any right to expect me to help her with it, no matter what I promised her I'd do. And ugh, why is stupid Tammy bothering me all the time? She actually thinks I'm going to hang out with her and her other stupid loser friends instead of practicing my hot dance moves all the time. And okay, I know she's my friend and all, but you know, she's pretty goofy, and her hair is really lame, and she can't dance, and neither can any of the other girls I used to call my friends back before I got cool, so it's really embarrassing that they expect me to slum and hang out with them. I mean seriously, how would that look to Jewel and the rest of my cool posse? I just can't do it. I'm sorry, but it just does not befit my new status as Dancing Queen. Plus, I'm having guy issues, because Raf, the guy who is supposed to ask me to Spring Fling, just isn't paying the kind of attention to me that he should. I mean seriously, doesn't he get how hot I am and that I have moves? What is wrong with him? And my dad is just not cooperating with Miri's spells. He's supposed to fall out of love with his wife-to-be and fall back in love with my mom, but it totally isn't working, and if he gets married the weekend of Spring Fling, it is totally going to crimp my style. I can't be in two places at once, and my school dance is waaay more important than any stupid wedding. Where are his priorities, for crying out loud?

Okay. So my dad is finally in love with the right woman and blowing off my stepmother-to-be. Raf finally asked me to the dance, and the fashion show is in less than a week. Of course, Tammy figured out that I'm a beyotch and hates my guts. It kinda sucks, but I got bigger fish to fry, so while it sort of upsets me that she doesn't think I'm totally awesome, I don't have a lot of time to think about it. Miri's mad too, because I've been blowing her off and not keeping any of my promises to her, but you know, whatever. I have a dance to plan, my father's wedding to destroy, and a stepmother-to-be to frame for it. Wait. That's The Princess Bride. But you know what I mean. Life is too good to worry about the little people.

Oh noes! My mom found out about the magic and undid all of it! I can't dance! I have zits! My father called off his wedding, but Mom knows it's because we put a spell on him to love her, so she took that off too, and now my father is getting married the day I have Spring Fling. How inconsiderate. But I can't think about that now, because I have to get to the Fashion Show and shake my booty on the catwalk. I'm kinda nervous about doing it without the magic, but whatever. I can't back out because the girl who planned it said she'd kill me. I've been practicing for forever, so I'm sure it'll be totally cool and nothing embarrassing or awful will happen, right? Right!

Well, that plan took a dive. I very predictably destroyed the entire fashion show. Literally. Like, the set, the dresses, the catwalk, everyone. I even caused the girl leading us all to break a leg or something. I mean, I humiliated the heck out of everybody, not just myself. Didn't see that coming from the moment I got cast, did you? So now all the cool kids totally hate me, Raf probably doesn't want to speak to me ever again, let alone dance with me, and Jewel turned her back on me when I needed her to tell me everything is going to be okay. It's the worst day of my whole life. And my mom guilted me into fixing the mess with my dad, so now I have to re-plan the wedding Miri managed to destroy. Which means I'm totally going to miss Spring Fling, so I may as well get my dad back together with my stepmother-to-be and get the wedding back on. Which Miri and I do, and even though my new stepmother was a real snot nearly the whole book, it turns out she's really nice and just wants us to like her, and Tammy totally forgave me and came to the wedding anyway, so even though I'm not a witch and everything went wrong when I tried to manipulate the world to my will, all's well that ends well. Which is good, because it turns out there's the tiniest chance Raf might actually still like me, and there are more books in this series, which means that I totally have at least 3 more books (to date) in which to finally learn that self-centered manipulation does not fly (or that there's more to life than looking good, having big boobs and great hair, and hanging with the in-crowd), so why bother to learn it now? Oh, Miri...

Cross My Heart & Hope to Spy

Ally Carter

Loved it. Adorable read. Carter is knockin' it outta the park with her Gallagher Girls series, and I can't wait for the next one, Don't Judge a Girl By Her Cover. Stay tuned for the full squee. :)

Marked

PC & Kristin Cast

Scale of 1-10: 3
Pros: Vampire school is an interesting concept, and the story itself is interesting in the last 1/3 of the book.
Cons: The concept is so poorly executed as to make me tear at my hair and gnash my teeth. Vampires as fluffy bunnies? REALLY?!? *heavy sigh*

I got the feeling PC Cast wanted to write a "clean" supernatural thriller, but what she came up with is so antiseptic and sheltered that frankly, I don't understand why she chose such traditionally sexy (and evil) creatures as vampires for the subject of her book, other than to grab some of the Twilight cash.

Synopsis: In a world where vampirism is a normal part of life as we know it, 16-year-old Zoey Redbird finds out she's destined to become one. She doesn't want to be one, but since it's pre-ordained by virus (which is NEVER explained), she has no choice and gets packed off to attend vampire school at the House of Night, where she leaves her old life behind and makes new friends, influences new people, and just generally has a grand old time shucking off this mortal coil until finally at the end of the book, conflict finally rears its ugly head and the story gets interesting.

My take: Ye gads. It's like the Small World ride at Disneyland, if all the dolls wore black and had crescent moon tats in the middle of their foreheads. It's vapid. It's shallow. It's...vampire bling. And on top of all of that, it's pretentious. Vampyres? Really? That's your contribution to the big scary, you're spelling vampire with a Y? I kept thinking of Andrew from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, intoning the word as "Vam-peer." Count Dracul. Transylvania. Nosferatu. If, like, Nosferatu went to high school, spoke with a hick accent, and was a 16-year-old girl who said "Hell!" and "poopie" and "boobies" all the time. And no, I'm not kidding.

*sigh* To recap:

So (cough), like (cough), my name is Zoey (cough, cough, cough), and I feel really crappy. (cough, cough) Pardon me while I hack up a lung while my Very Best Friend In the Whole Wide World babbles on about something I couldn't really care less about as we walk to my locker. Oh, look - there's a vampire standing in front of my locker. The hell, dude? I can tell he's a vampire - excuse me: vampYre - because he has a vampyre tattoo on his forehead. Plus an extra tat that means he's a Tracker. That can't be good. Somebody's gonna get it. Wait - he's pointing at me. The somebody is me? Well that just sucks. OW! My head totally hurts. Excuse me while I faint.

Okay, whew, I'm awake now. (cough cough cough) Kayla is staring at me, and my head still hurts. I feel really crappy. Mondays totally suck. What? I'm marked? I have a vampyre tat on my forehead? I don't wanna be a vampyre. I hate wearing black. I get nauseous at the sight of my own blood. I know that should be nauseated, that nauseous means I make other people feel sick, but my authors didn't take the time to look it up, and their editor totally didn't bother with it either, and since I'm really pretty vapid and feel like crap with all the coughing, which I'm not going to explain ever, really, what do you want from me? It's Monday, dude, and my day is totally NOT off to a good start. And it's not the first grammatical error to be made in this tome, since I'm pretty sure my authors made up words like "rapider", so don't bug me with details.

As I was saying, now I have this stupid vampyre tat on my face, so I should probably tell you that in the world of this novel, vampyrism is totally normal and some people are just arbitrarily destined to turn into them, but I'm not going to explain it any more than that. Do I look like a scientist to you? I didn't think so. Move along, Sparky. Where was I? Oh yeah: now I have to start going to the House of Night, where I will learn to be a vampyre or DIE. If I don't go, I will DIE. Do you get it? I will DIE. Guess I better go tell my mom. That should suck, because my new stepdad is a total jerk and religious nutbag, and ever since she married him, my mom has turned into a Stepford Wife, so basically, I'll probably end up packing up my stuff and sneaking out my bedroom window, on accounta my stepdad thinks I'm a bad seed anyway, so my turning into a vampyre oughtta pretty much hammer the last nail into that coffin, don'tcha think? Coffin! Heh, heh. I made a funny. I slay me. There! I did it again! My authors rule.

Anyway, yeah, Mom and the stepjerk freaked and threatened me with a prayer circle, therapy, and probably reform school, so here I am, sneaking out and going to see my Gramma Redbird, who is a Cherokee Wise Woman and totally rocks. She'll know what to do. On the way, I'll stop to cough up a few chunks of lung, go for a hike, slip, fall, hit my head and require stitches, and have a hallucinatory chat with Nyx, the Vampyre Goddess, in which she makes me her eyes and ears in the mortal realm. Why, I don't know, and don't you bother your pretty little head about it, either. Ours is not to reason why. Vampyres are mysterious, man. Go with it. (Bee Tee Double-U, she also fills in my vampyre tattoo, even though that shouldn't happen until I don't die and turn into a full vampyre, about 5 years from now, so I must really be special.)

So like, the House of Night is totally awesome. I made 4 cool friends right off the bat and saw some girl giving a guy head at the end of this dark hallway while I was waiting for the school principal (High Priestess of Nyx, actually, and my mentor - how convenient is that?) to come show me to my dorm. I do not give blowjobs, as I already know that only slutty girls give them, and only boys who want to degrade and use girls like to get them. I refuse to be oppressed, so don't worry about me ever giving any guy a BJ. Good girls do NOT do that. EVAR.

Anyway, one of my awesome new friends is my roommate, and she wants to be a C&W singer when she grows up, and it turns out that lots of famous people are vampyres. You, of course, can not see their vampyre tats, because you don't--well, actually, I don't know why. My authors never bother to explain that. Huh. *shrug* Did I mention I stopped coughing when I got to the House of Night? This place is totally awesome! It would be perfect if it weren't for that slutty girl giving a BJ to the really hawt guy in the hall. Her name is Aphrodite, and she's a total bitch. I don't curse though, except to say hell, so I will call her a hag. A lot. I say Hell! a lot too, because it's the only curse word I say, so I feel like I have to use it all the time, for every single situation, even when no cursing is warranted or needed in the narrative. It makes me sound really edgy, yo. I know that will probably annoy you to the point that you feel like counting how many times a page I say it, or what the maximum number of pages is between uses, so what I'll do is, I'll distract you between Hell!s by talking like a baby and saying "poopie" instead of "manure", and I'll say "boobies" instead of "breasts", not so much because I don't want to be vulgar, but because talking like you're 6 is totally in. The hell it isn't!

My teachers here at the House are all totally awesome and have elaborate tattoos. I love my classes. Aphrodite is the only thing I don't like here, but me and my friends just call her and her gang of ho's "hags" all the time, and that makes everything fine. Everything is great here. Of course, a girl I thought was nice died in class, but I wasn't there, so I don't know what it was like. My roommate does, but she doesn't want to talk about it, so we're all just going to pretend we don't care for another few chapters. I know you're probably curious, but hell, I didn't write this thing, so let's just keep going to my awesome classes and cutting up with my friends, and while we're doing that, I will find out I have this awesome special power that will make me the high priestess one day, and I'll see a ghost that isn't really a ghost, but I'm not going to delve any more deeply into that, and you shouldn't worry about it either, because my authors don't want to explain it at the moment. Also, apparently vampyrism is a lot like Wicca, because the vampyres do spells and stuff, and we have circles where we invoke Nyx that involve air, earth, water, fire, and spirit, just like Wiccans. It even turns out my super power is an affinity with the elements. That makes me super special and the only fledgeling to ever have that power in the entire history of the House of Night. Hell! Now I'm an even bigger freak than I was when I was just the new kid with the filled-in tattoo.

Hmm. Maybe I should miss my family and all my friends, but I'm really too busy with my new, cool vampyre life to worry about that kind of thing. Especially since the hawt guy in the hall likes me. He walked me to my dorm a couple of times, and the last time he did it, I kissed him. Aw, hell! Now I'm a slutty girl too, because I kissed a guy in public by the door to my building. Only sluts do that kind of slutty thing. Hell!

I've given it a lot of thought and decided that besides being a slut and a hag, Aphrodite is also a mean girl, and as such, I've decided to usurp her power and take over leadership of the secret club she initiated me into, the Dark Daughters. That's what she gets for feeding me blood without my permission. She thought I wouldn't want to be in her club, so ha! the joke's on her! And it only took me 167 pages to finally grow a backbone and for my authors to get around to spicing this story up and tossing in some conflict. I'm also going to totally steal her hawt ex-boyfriend, but first I have to try to finally break up with my almost-ex-boyfriend who just won't get the message and is enthralled by me since he Imprinted on my vampyric awesomeness and I licked the blood from a scratch on his wrist. (Hell, it smelled fantastic, even if it was gross I did that and don't want to tell my friends, in case they judge me for it. Hell, hell, hell!) He's such a dork. Turns out, he was sleeping with my Very Best Friend Evar, Kayla, that mean, slutty ho. I knew I never really liked her all that much, anyway. Her or her stupid slutty camisole that looks like it shows her boobies but really doesn't. The one we call her boob shirt. I know I should say boobies, but Boobie Shirt doesn't sound as good as Boob Shirt, so that's the one concession I will make to common vulgarity. Let's all get past it, on accounta I finally get to see a kid die from not making the Change. Well, actually, I don't see him die, but I see him get really, really sick, and then later I see his ghost with glowing red eyes and a totally corporeal form that bleeds and smells really bad too, even though I thought ghosts were supposed to not have bodies OR blood, but that's life here, and anyway, I have a Club Presidency to usurp, so you're just going to have to forget all the shallow inattention to detail and blatant ripping off of Spiderman that my authors put into this thing while I go do that and then walk home afterward happy with my homies, coz that's just the way I roll, yo.

Sweep: Book of Shadows

Cate Tiernan

Scale of 1-10: 4
Pros: Tiernan's writing does not suck, and she might be able to get decent mileage out of her story, as the books are short and quick reads.
Cons: Struck me as a Harry Potter retread with an older, female heroine.

Synopsis: Morgan Rowlands finds out she's got a talent for witchcraft after superhot, supernatural Cal Blaire moves to her small, upstate NY town and starts slingin' the magic mojo around...not that anyone seems to notice or think it's weird.

My take: In a nutshell? Tiernan is lazy. She tells us how her characters feel, rather than describing their reactions and letting us see it; shrugs details off as supernatural magic mojo instead of giving any real reason for events to occur; and tends to bludgeon her readers with the Big Bat of Foreshadowing instead of dropping a subtle trail of bread crumbs leading up to the big revelation(s). Basically, the story goes a gorgeous new guy moves to town and all the girls are drawn to him. Magick, jealousy, and chick fights ensue...sort of like an episode of Dark Shadows - if Barnabus Collins were a magic-slinging high school senior. Or maybe more like The Wiccan Bachelor meets My So-Called Life...

(WARNING: RECAP AND SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Hi, I'm Morgan. I'm really boring and no one notices me. This is my BFF Bree. She's hot and gorgeous. That's her boyfriend Chris. Hi, Robbie, my other best friend. Oo, superhot supernatural new guy - who's he? Oooo, Cal! I dig Cal. I think he smiled at me, too, what up with that? Oo, AND we have some classes together (even though he's a senior and I'm just a junior) on accounta I'm a braniac. wOOt!

Wow, Cal is so hot he makes me nervous. All the girls in school think he's totally hot, so it's not just me. He's been dating around a lot, too, like a new girl every week. He's totally a man-ho. And what's with his necklace? It's a star with a circle around it. Even though I'm in AP classes and a braniac, I have absolutely no idea what that could possibly mean. Huh. Wait - he's invited me to a party! wOOt!

Okay, so the party is a witches' circle. Wicca? What is Wicca? Magic is spelled with a K at the end? This is really weird, but I'm goin' with it coz it's new and cool and Cal is hawt. Every time I look at him, I want to touch him or touch what he touched. But I'm totally not stalking him. It's just that, for some strange reason, I really want him, even though I don't stand a chance, on accounta how plain I am. Bree wants him too, and she broke up with Chris so she could snag Cal! Oh no! Bree always gets her man, and she runs through 'em like she's a total ho. Which of course she isn't, because she's my BFF and we totally love each other. She even said I could keep my books about Wicca at her house after my mom and dad found them and flipped out. Gee, who would have thought that devout Catholic parents might have problems accepting witchcraft as harmless? Parents are soooo unreasonable.

Okay, now I have ESP in addition to how this witchcraft thing affects me physically, and everyone keeps asking me which clan of Blood Witches I belong to, and so maybe I might be from one of the Big 7 celebrity witch families, even though my parents are devout Catholics, and my new ability to totally use the Force is freaky and scary. But also super cool, coz now I have cool new power. I think I'll work a spell on Robbie but totally not tell him what I'm doing, because I don't want anybody to know, in case I fall flat on my face. Plus, Cal might not think I'm cool if he knows I blew a simple spell. Jeez, why is Bree being such a bitch about Cal? And how come nobody in school seems to notice that Cal is totally not like everyone else? Also, skinnydipping with my tiny boobs when everyone else has totally awesome ones? I don't think so.

Sweet! The spell on Robbie totally worked. Of course, now everyone thinks I'm a freak, and Bree is really being a jealous superbitch. We're not BFF's anymore, and I am so totally going to ask for all my stuff back. Skank. If she thinks I'm not going to the Halloween circle, she's got another thing coming.

Wow, Halloween was awesome! I had yet another huge magick Wicca moment and passed out again, and ohmigod, Cal kissed me with his superhot, supernatural boy lips! Boy, I bet that really chapped Bree's ass. wOOt!

The End

Currently Reading: Marked

I'm halfway through it and still no conflict. It's like a Disneyland ride, with vampires - excuse me: vampyres - instead of adorable, fluffy bunnies. Vampire Kisses had more depth.

Oy.

Vampire Kisses

Ellen Schreiber

Scale of 1-10: 2.5
Pros: Spunky heroine who isn't afraid to stand up for herself and be who she is, and more importantly, does not fit the norm.
Cons: Kitschy vernacular wore on my nerves and was caricatured, while some of the dialogue was downright painful.

Synopsis: 16-year-old Raven has wanted to be a vampire since she was 5. On the day she turns 16, a mysterious new family moves into the old mansion down the street - the very same "haunted" mansion that Raven snuck into back when she was 12. A rumor starts that the family are vampires, which thrills Raven, and antagonizes her archnemesis Trevor, the town superstar. It's outcast vs. hunk, with Raven's future love at stake. (stake - get it?! bygones.*)

*(i would have peppered this entry with vampire puns, but the book really burned me out on them for at least the next 100 years; all the holy water in the land couldn't make me pony up another one.)

My take: Ouch. There's good stuff for teens, and then there's everything else. Ellen Schreiber's Vampire Kisses falls into the everything else category. About the nicest thing I can say about it is that it wasn't awful and is a quick read. Sadly, that's not saying much.

Schreiber needs to spend more time with teens (or at least with the entertainment they enjoy), and she seems to have trouble finding her voice and staying with it. After a brief and promising introduction of sorts, Vampire Kisses lapses into a too-cute-to-be-hip tale of Raven's early school years and the birth of her baby brother before switching to the present day and adopting a too-cool-for-school attitude that would work if it were actually as hip as it tries to be, but is instead very much geek trying for goth and way missing the mark. I can not imagine Schreiber was at all anything but a geek or wannabe during her teen years, as she manages to nail the nerdy aspects of her main character completely while completely missing anything even remotely cool about the self-described "Goth Girl." Her prose is so juvenile as to occasionally dip into silly, and at times the narrative is rushed, jumping from one scene or moment to the next without any connective tissue. In addition, Schreiber relies heavily on the use of "catchy" (if only) nicknames and seems to think that assigning them to things (Goth Girl, Goth Guy, Nerd Boy, Creepy Man, Monster Chick, Dullsville) makes one hip and her lingo tight. And it might, if she were a more talented writer or gifted mimic of the Joss Whedon School of Vernacular; unfortunately, their relentless cheese factor and high rate of repetition is fairly annoying, as is Schreiber's lazy use of them to establish character. Throughout her novel, Schreiber's hip shots miss their mark, calling more attention to that fact than to actually imbue the book with any semblance of teen cred, though there are stretches which did not bother me, where Schreiber seemed to forget she was supposed to be hip and cool and just wrote.

Many authors writing teen fiction seem to think they need to dumb down for their audience, and unfortunately, Schreiber seems to have fallen into that trap. Her book alternates between being right on track - when Raven schools her nemesis Trevor, for instance - and wildly missing it's mark - Raven's dinner at the mansion. Don't get me started on the romantic dialogue. I wouldn't have bought it when I was 13, let alone 16 or 17, it was so painfully wooden and obvious, and I doubt there's a vampire pun or reference Schreiber left untouched.

Vampire Kisses is book 1 in a series, and it definitely leaves the reader hanging in an attempt to lead sales for book 2. I'll pass. Schreiber would have benefitted by watching a few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer before she started writing her series. Sadly, the best thing about Vampire Kisses is the synopsis on the back cover. A synopsis Schreiber clearly didn't write.

Snarklet: Blood & Chocolate

Annette Curtis Klause

Let's see...the main character and narrator (for whom we are meant to cheer) is mean-spirited and nasty, nearly every character in the book behaves like a rapaciously sex-starved porn star locked permanently in his/her 40's, and the "happy ending" to this whole sordid tale of werewolves living among us is statutory rape.

Gee, and me without any popcorn.

Stay tuned for the full snark. When I have time, it will flow. Freely.