Who: Beth FantaskeyWhat: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
Where: Barnes & Nobles Amazon
When: December 1st, 2008
Why: Interest
How: Borrowed
The undead can really screw up your senior year ...
Marrying a
vampire definitely doesn’t fit into Jessica Packwood’s senior year “get-a-life”
plan. But then a bizarre (and incredibly hot) new exchange student named Lucius
Vladescu shows up, claiming that Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by
birth—and he’s her long-lost fiancé. Armed with newfound confidence and a copy
of Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions,
Jessica makes a dramatic transition from average American teenager to glam
European vampire princess. But when a devious cheerleader sets her sights on
Lucius, Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a
global vampire war—and save Lucius’s soul from eternal destruction
If you have never read this book before, get your butt to a bookstore and buy it! I HATE the summary, because it makes the story sound light and fluffy, and because of it, I had been expecting a chick-lit book about vampires. I. WAS. SO. WRONG. This book was perfectly angst, full of tension, consequences, all that good stuff. And it was surprisingly....dark. LOVED it!
The beginning pretty much starts out like any average vampire book. Girl does to school, blah blah blah, feels like something mysterious is going on, blah blah blah, THEN meets boy. But don't let that discourage you because Beth completely re-wrote this genre. Seriously, I never once went "Hey, this kinda sounds like _____ or _____" because it never did. Beth gave me a new, refreshing world with a unique take on vampires.
Jessica's character is strong, determined, and not annoying. Because really, there are a lot of heroines that just annoy. But she was logical and thought Lucius was high when he said she was a vampire, which actually MAKES sense! I love it when the heroine is shocked when they're love interest is a paranormal creature, because you are seriously not just going to go: "Oh, really? That's cool." Your going to either 1)Scream 2)Laugh or 3)Be in denial. Jessica was insecure (like most girls are), headstrong, and stubborn. Loved her.
And Lucius *swoon*. Is it weird to find him especially smexy when he's angry? He was a gentlemen, kind yet arrogant (which I kinda really love in fictional guys) and perfectly scarred. He wasn't emo and depressed all the time because of his past, but instead accepted it as part of him and didn't try to push it away. And he's perfectly dangerous ;)
I really, really, really loved this book. It was the perfect combination of love, freedom, consequences and the right to be one's self, not the person people have molded you to be.
I rate: AWESOMESAUCE
Comment! Discuss! Happy Reading!
-Harmony B.
ETA:
I read my friend's review of Jessica's Guide and remembered something. I was a bit ticked off about the whole sob-plot with Faith and did not like it at all. That was something I did not like at all.
