The second book in the Blue Bloods series begins where the last one leaves off. Our heroine is trying to solve the mystery of who is preying on her and her fellow teenage vampires, but the all powerful Committee denies that there is any danger.
Four books into the Sookie Stackhouse series, I'm finally willing to admit I'm getting hooked. That's not entirely stubbornness or snobbery talking; only with this one and it's predecessor, Club Dead did I read the books in a hurry. Plus, I liked that Harris thanked a librarian, Doris Ann Norris, in her acknowledgments page.
I couldn't remember the name of a teen vampire series I saw the last time I was at the Tompkins Square branch of the New York Public Library. They didn't have the first book in the series, so I told myself I'd remember it. Ha! So I typed {ya fiction vampires} into a search engine and came up with Vampire Fiction for Young Adults as the first result. I immediately recognized Blue Bloods as the series I was after, and I'll be able to mine the site for more teen vamp books as soon as I'm done with the Blue Bloods. Just thought I'd share. (Maybe all y'all teen librarians know about Monster Librarian, but us ignorant academics aren't quite as well-informed.)
I know, I know, I'm sick of reading all this paranormal fiction. I really need something a little meatier right now. But it also has to be compelling. I've been in a bad way for all of 2009, literarily speaking, I think. Suggestions welcome for literary fiction (along the lines of A Map of Home or Peony in Love, for example) and Twilight readalikes!
For once I was less psyched to read a paranormal fiction series novel. I think I'm getting a little burnt out on them. I didn't enjoy this any less, but instead of a yummy snack on my usual menu of healthy enriching brain foods, it's becoming too much of the norm. Part of the problem feeding my carb-like genre fiction is that I privilege books I borrow from NYPL over Barnard/Columbia books because their due dates are more compelling. The rare books that I acquire in other ways (usually that are given to me) wait months or even years to get read. And what do I check out from NYPL vs. my academic library?--science and popular fiction, comic books and young adult literature. But what am I to do, I'm the English and American literature selector, so I have to read the reviews in Library Journal. Lately I've taken to saving appealing titles in RefWorks to read later, but it's not always possible to wait!
The latest in Harrison's Hollows series finds witch Rachel Morgan still mourning her dead vampire boyfriend and trying to regain her memory of his double murder. (Vampires die twice in this reality--first to become undead and then dead dead.)
I had to pick up my brother at the airport, but I might be able to squeeze in a stop at the university library as well as a charm shop for Jenks before that. A locator charm was devilishly hard. I honestly didn't know if I could pull it off. The library would be the only place I could find the recipe. Well, besides the Internet, but that was asking for trouble. p. 93
I wasn't going to read another paranormal fiction book so soon after the last two, but I really like the Kitty series and had been waiting a while for this installment to appear in my public library catalog. When it finally did, I place a hold, and when my hold arrived, I of course, in the name of being a good library patron, snapped it up. But I wonder what's taking them so long to get the next installment listed as on order in LEO. (ZOMG, I love that the link from Carrie Vaughn's website takes you to her local independent bookstore, the Tattered Cover! I believe TC was the driver of the independent bookstores lawsuit against Barnes and Noble.)
I really enjoyed the first Weather Warden book, Ill Wind, and so perhaps had too high expectations from its successor. Unfortunately the protagonist, Joanne Baldwin, in contrast to the heroine in the last paranormal fiction series book I read doesn't seem more layered now that I know her a little better. I'll still read the next book in the series, but I'm not in a big hurry. It may be that reading these two books back to back put me off.
I liked this second installment to Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series more than the first, which is kind of unusual for me, but I don't think for this type of series. I think a lot of them get stronger as the basics are laid out and the characters have time to develop. Like the first, this novel is narrated by werewolf Elena Michaels, the only female of her kind in existence.
Teen girl angst, wanting
the boy, the in crowd, not her
destined werewolf king.
btw Don't read the book because you liked the movie, or vice-versa. They are nothing alike, having in common only character names.