“Blue Bloods” by Melissa De La Cruz

Three Stars

Schuyler (pronounced Skyler) Van Alan has never fit in with the other students at her elite private school in the heart of Manhattan. While the other students live lives of power, privilege, and money, Schuyler’s once prominent family has fallen from both fortune and grace within New York’s elite society. But none of this has really bothered her. She has her two best friends, Oliver and Dylan, and together they’re making it through high school just fine.

Until the day it all changes. After one of their classmates is found dead, the most popular boy in school, Jack Force, begins to pay attention to Schuyler. Then she receives an invitation to join The Committee, the most prestigious youth committee in all of Manhattan, open only to the children of the oldest, richest and most influential families of New York City. Schuyler’s grandmother insists she join and it is at the first meeting where she learns the truth. She, and everyone else on The Committee, are vampires. And if this isn’t enough to deal with, something evil has returned and is hunting them all down.

Schuyler must find the truth about her family’s past and find out what is hunting all the young vampires in the city before it finds her, all while trying to balance new and old friendships and make it through high school.

I had fun reading this book. The story is a fresh take on vampires and so seems to fit with the elite lifestyles of the wealthy of New York City. It’s clever and entertaining and a fairly quick read. I enjoyed all of the characters, both good and bad, and the history of vampires that she has created. Melissa has created a mythology for vampires that is so logical it’s effortless to accept and slide in to. The characters are developed and believable and you can’t help but like them, even when you jealously want to hate them. The back story is obviously well thought and planned out because she does an amazing job of piecing it all slowly together as the story progresses, revealing bit by bit at a time, until it finally all comes together in the end making sense.

“Blue Bloods” is the first in a series and I’ve already picked up several from the library to continue the story. I’m excited to learn more about the history of vampires and that of the characters themselves. I hope that their histories will piece together and connect in fun ways.

I do worry a little that this series will drag on too long and loose it’s best qualities. There are seven books in the series and I’m worried that the plots and content and going to wear thin. But who knows, maybe it will be great. I followed other series well beyond seven books and maybe this one will surprise me.

"Something Borrowed" by Emily Giffin

Two Stars

Rachel has spent her entire life playing the good-girl sidekick to her best friend Darcy, who leads a perfect life. Darcy has it all looks, an awesome PR job, a fancy New York apartment, and the ideal fiancé, Dex, whom Rachel happens to be in love with. While Rachel has always worked hard and played it safe earning a small studio New York apartment, a job as an over-worked associate at a large firm, and a non-existent love life.

This is how life just is and always has been for these BFF’s, until the night before Rachel’s thirtieth birthday.

After the surprise birthday party Darcy threw for her, Rachel sleeps with Dex. At first she thinks it was a drunken mistake, then Dex confesses that he has feelings for her. As the wedding date gets closer, Rachel is faced with the moral dilemma of whether or not to put her personal wants ahead of her life-long friendship.

I didn’t really like this book. It was well written, the characters were believable, and the plot was not very predictable. I just hated everyone in it. They were all morally corrupt, self-centered jerks.

Rachel is whiny and jealous of Darcy, but happy to follow along and enjoy the benefits of their friendship. She thinks she morally superior, smarter, and basically a better person than Darcy. But she spends the whole book betraying, lying, and plotting against her supposed best and oldest friend.

Dex is a scumbag for cheating on his fiancé whom he has been with for seven years. I couldn’t understand why Rachel would want to be with someone who would behave like that. If they’ll do it with ya, they’ll do it to ya, girl. Way to pick a winner, good luck with that one!

The end tries to balance things out and, I’m assuming, make Rachel and Dex look less awful, but I just don’t care. You can’t justify your behavior based on someone else’s, especially when you find out about theirs after the fact. You’re choices show who you are and Rachel is a lying cheat. Sorry, it is what it is.

The book is getting two stars because I didn’t hate it, it’s not that it’s a bad book, on the contrary the book is technically sound. It moves along quickly and the characters are very real. It’s just that I did not like the people in it and don’t really want to spend more time with them because they’re all jerks.

"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand

Four Stars

Unbroken is the true story of Louie Zamperini. A young juvenile delinquent who became a US Olympic runner, competed in the 1936 games in Germany where he met Hitler, trained to be the first to run a 4-minute mile, enlisted after Pearl Harbor, and became a War Hero.

While flying a rescue mission, Zamperini’s own plane crashed, leaving him adrift in the middle of the shark infested Pacific Ocean with his friend and pilot, Russell “Phil” Phillips. They must now find a way to survive with no food, no water, no real hope of rescue, and only the ever-aggressive sharks to escort them as they drift deeper and deeper into enemy waters. But the true fear is if they do manage to find land, who and what fate will be waiting there for them.

This guy really did have an unbelievably amazing life. Seriously, he is the reason they invented the saying “You can’t make this stuff up.” Being introduced to Hitler, surviving a plane crash, jumping sharks, 40-foot waves, and so much more that I don’t want to give away. And, probably one of the most amazing points for me, he’s still alive today!

I was able to put the book down, I didn’t have to tear myself away, but it definitely kept me reading and I finished quickly. Louie’s ability to not only survive, but maintain his humanity and sense of self, while faced with the darkest side of the human soul is truly awe-inspiring.

Hillenbrand has done an absolutely thorough job of compiling every detail of Louie’s story, including pictures and facts along the way, and presents it in such a way that you don’t even notice her. You are alone with Louie every step of his story, which I think is the sign of a very skilled researcher and author. However, there is one comment towards the end, not related to Louie but to Russell Phillips, that made me think “Well Laura, didn’t you just do the same thing?” (you’ll probably know it when you get there, but if not I’ll be happy to discuss with you if you’d like) and sort of made me not like her in an oddly confusing way. Maybe I need to work that odd issue out a little more.

This is an amazing read. It is a scary representation of the darkness people are capable of and an inspiring story of survival at the same time. I really enjoyed reading something about the Pacific side of WWII, instead of the German and European side. I recommend this not only because of Louie’s amazing story but also as a very educational piece on the experiences of soldiers in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

"Jane Bites Back" by Michael Thomas Ford

Three Stars

Jane Austen is not dead, but in fact a vampire. She has spent the last 200 years watching her popularity rise and her books fly off the shelf, without ever receiving a royalty check. She cringes as people rush to her small bookstore in upstate New York to buy the latest unauthorized sequel, spin-off, retelling, or companion novel to her books, and shudders to hear both readers and authors misinterpret her characters and their motives.  And to make the sting even worse, the novel she wrote just before she ‘died’ has been rejected by publishers 116 times.

She lives alone with her cat in order to keep anyone from getting too close and finding out what and who she really is. But things become complicated when Jane is suddenly pulled back into the spotlight and must find a way to enjoy it without letting her true past be discovered.

I read this book on a recommendation and it was actually quite fun. Jane is easy to relate to and her frustrations with her life and the book world are believable and understandable. There are a lot of literary references thrown in, which at first were fun but the joke wore thin pretty quickly. Jane finds herself in some rather funny situations and there are a couple of plot twists that made me laugh (even though I’m not sure that they were supposed to be all that funny).

This book was headed for four stars until the end, where it set itself up to be a series. The idea is cute, and the irony of it being a Jane Austen spin-off about Jane Austen mad about all of the spin-offs works for one book, but not as a series. Once the set up was introduced I sort of soured on the whole thing, mainly because the irony is lost once it becomes a series.

So go ahead and read this book if you would like a good laugh and to hang out with a rather believable Jane. It was fun, I just can’t enjoy it the same without the irony of what it was as a stand-alone novel.

"The Vampire Diaries" by L. J. Smith

Three Stars

Another TV show that I (am a little embarrassed to admit) enjoy.

Elena Gilbert, her aunt, and younger sister have all just returned from a summer in Paris after the tragic death of her parents. On the first day of school she sees the new student, handsome and mysterious Stefan Salvatore, and decides that she will have him.

Elena is the perfect high school girl, pretty, popular, cheerleader, so she cannot understand why Stefan insists on ignoring and avoiding her at every opportunity. None of her usual plans work until she throws herself into serious danger during Prom and Stefan is the one who saves her. After that they become inseparable and Elena learns Stefan’s secret – he’s a vampire.

But this is only part of Stefan’s story. Elena becomes more frightened of, yet drawn to Stefan other secrets are revealed. Including the fact that Elena is an exact copy of Stefan’s first love Katherine, who died tragically and also happened to be the vampire that changed him. There’s also the problem of his brother Damon. Stefan and Damon were both in love with Katherine. She changed them both into vampires, and after her death they tried to kill each other then never spoke again. Problem is, Damon has decided that Elena is good enough of a reason for a family reunion.

This book was fun. It is a lot different from the TV show and I think the show is better. Truthfully, if I didn’t like the show I probably would not have liked the book very much. Elena is really a brat and not very likable at times, but it works because that’s how the author presents her and who she’s supposed to be.

This book is really just a set up for the series so I don’t know how closely or completely differently the show’s storyline is from the other books. The show is kind of stupid but fun at the same time, so that’s all I’m hoping for from this series

"The Apothecaries Daughter" by Julie Klassen

One Star

Lily Haswell and her younger brother, Charlie, have been raised by their father, the local apothecary, ever since her mother left them three years before. Women are not allowed to be apothecaries, yet Lily learns everything about the trade by helping her father run the store after her mother’s abandonment.

Everything in Lily’s life changes when her rich aunt and uncle arrive from London hoping to take Charlie back with them since they have no children. However, Charlie, who suffered brain damage during birth, is not what they had hoped so they ask Lily to come instead. Lily, who had always dreamed of travel and adventure, leaves her family and spends the next two years in London, enjoying the season and looking for a husband.

When an urgent message is received from Lily’s old friend, begging her to return and help her family, Lily reluctantly leaves London mid-season only to find herself surrounded by three eligible suitors in her home town. She must decide between which man she loves and which life she wishes to lead, all while working to heal her father and save the family business.

I didn’t really like this book. I downloaded it to my Kindle because it was free and am quite happy that I did not pay for it. It wasn’t horrible, but I just didn’t really like it. It’s almost two completely separate stories, her life at home and her life in London, that I felt the author tried too hard to combine for conflict at the end.

And Lily is really kind of a brat when she returns. She acts like she knows everything and is better than her old friends and, this really bugged me, she took her brother, who is mentally disabled, away from a job that he found, loved, and thrived at, so that he could come home and work in her family’s garden. I think she did it because the job was at the big manor house outside of town and she felt it was demeaning to her family to have her brother be a servant.

And all the while there is a little too much information about the apothecaries vs. doctor controversy of that time.

It was all just a little to formulaic and predictable to me.

"Deja Dead" by Kathy Reichs

Three Stars

I love the TV show BONES. It’s a great show, mostly because of the supporting characters, which is also why I still have MAJOR issues with what they did to Zack. Fix it writers – FIX. IT.

Since I love the show the obvious next step for me was to read the books on which it is based. I decided to start at the beginning with “Deja Dead”, the first of Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan novels. I knew going in that the books were very different than the show and that the main characters shared very little in common other than their name and profession. So I began to read expecting it to be different from the show but still enjoyable. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed.

In this book Brennan comes off as obnoxious and annoying. She keeps interfering with the investigation of the murders she is working on in ways that I am absolutely sure would end in destroying a case for any prosecutor and set a killer free. Then she is so offended and confused as to why this upsets the cops and investigators. She is so mad that they keep telling her to back off and yet I’m sure she wouldn’t be too happy to find them in her lab performing an autopsy or messing with her bones.

Her behavior is also completely opposite of how a logical, science-minded person would behave. A serial killer has singled her out on two occasions and left a severed head in her backyard and her response is to not call the police then follow a prostitute through the wrong side of town, hiding in dark alleys inhabited by rats and drunken hobos, hoping to stumble across her main suspect. It just becomes hard to understand her and buy in to her behavior.

And then there is the implied relationship with Detective Andrew Ryan. The foreshadowing of this relationship is a bit obvious and feels very forced.

Overall, the characters and their motives come across forced and a bit stereotypical. The one great thing about the book was the murder cases they are trying to solve. I did enjoy how every clue seemed to lead nowhere and have nothing to do with anything else until the very end where Reichs brings it all back and ties it together with one obvious yet almost invisible link.

“Deja Dead” is getting three starts but I’m not giving up on this series. Kathy Reichs is still publishing Brennan novels so I assume that they get better. I think most of the things I didn’t like come more from this being the first book than it just being a bad series. The mystery aspect of the books is great, the character development just needs work.

I’ll go back probably not in order, and hopefully I will come to like these characters and this series as much as I do its TV counterpart.