Book Review: Dead Is the New Black by Marlene Perez

Nightshade, California seems like your average small, quiet town. It has its diners and its schools. But Nightshade, and its inhabitants, are anything but ordinary. Meet Daisy Giordano, a normal-seeming teenage girl in a family full of psychics. With a mother who can see the future, an older sister who can read minds, and another sister who can move things with her mind, Daisy has always felt out of place. But then things get weird, even for Nightshade. Teenage girls start to pop up dead, seeming as though they have had the life sucked out of them. And when the queen bee of Nightshade High goes from girly to goth, Daisy decides to trade her hoodies for pom poms and investigate. Can she crack this mystery?

Dead Is the New Black  is the first book in Marlene Perez's provoking series. This book gives readers a level of excitement that comes from any supernatural book, but its teenage angst element allows readers to feel sympathy for the character. With great plot twists and turns, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat. Other books in the series include Dead is a State of Mind and Dead is so Last Year.


-bookwizard

Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde

It's almost Halloween, and my mind always turns to dark suburban streets, and the rattle of dry leaves blown by the first cold wind of the season.  We all love creepy stories because we never think it could happen to us.  That's what Kerry thought too, and no good deed goes unpunished.  When Kerry's little brother asks her to go get the teddy bear he forgot at the laundromat, she figures the worst that could happen is a scolding from her father. Sure it was eleven'o'clock at night, and she didn't have permission to take the car, but it's just the laundromat.

When Kerry walks in, the laundromat is deserted and creepy, but she finds the teddy bear and turns to go.  Then a group of thugs burst through the door with a boy about Kerry's age, tied up and bleeding. Once they notice Kerry, they take her prisoner too while they try to determine is she's "one of them." One of what Kerry isn't sure, until they pull out Bibles and start talking about waiting until dawn.  They think the boy is a vampire, and they plan to kill him.  And Kerry too if she can't convince them she's human.  And that's just chapter one.  Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde is about making bad choices, falling in with dangerous people, and how hard it can be to tell a truth from a lie.  Plus, there's kidnapping, murder, and maybe a vampire.  These are a few of my favorite things.  Happy reading.
~ gothbrarian

The Perfect Halloween Book

A little scary, a little creepy, with a good dose of humor and lots of wackiness, Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez makes for good Halloween reading. 

Nessy is a kobold in charge of tending the castle of Margle the Horrendous and caring for all the beasts, ghosts, undead, and enemies that Margle has cursed into bizarre forms over the years.  Margle, in case you haven't guessed by now, is a wizard.  A greedy wizard with a inordinate love of revenge.  So when he dies, all of his odd (and occasionally gruesome) collections of both beasts and former enemies are thrilled.  Until they discover that the magics in the castle are unraveling in strange ways.

Nessy is the only one without a curse, so everyone's expecting her to save the day.  Nessy would much rather clean house (she prefers things tidy and orderly), but suddenly that's not so much of an option.  She and her friends (a bat, a disembodied voice, a purple people eater, and pieces of a wizard in a jar) are now frantically trying to outwit demons, an evil wizardess, and keep monsters on the loose from eating the other residents of the castle. 

If you find yourself waiting for Too Many Curses, check out one of A. Lee Martinez's other books.  Brew up some hot cider and curl up with some early Halloween candy and one of his books.  If you like wacky and a little creepy, you won't regret it. 

~ Book Ninja

Marked

Marked, by P.C. Cast, starts off as just a normal day for Zoey Redbird at her high school, until a tracker showed up and marked her. Now Zoey has to go to a new school, meet new friends, and, worst of all, tell her mom and step-loser about being marked and having to go to a special school for marked kids where she will either die or complete the change into a vampire. Sadly, her parents don't accept the fact that she was chosen, along with many others, to become a fledgling and attempt to go through the change.

Zoey escapes her parents grasps and heads for her new school just in time, because when she gets there the headmistress is waiting for her to arrive. Zoey is told to head to the courtyard and wait there, but on her way she witnesses a strange encounter between between a really cute guy and a way too desperate girl named Aphrodite. When Zoey is seen she flees from the scene and runs to the courtyard, where she meets up with the headmistress Nefrete and tries to forget about the strange encounter. After being introduced to all of her new teachers, Zoey is exausted and ready to rest her head on her new pillow and start her new life as a vampire fledgling or die. Will Zoey complete the change or will she die? Read the book and find out.

~ Morgan Le Fay

How Afraid Are You To Die?

In a world where vampires have taken control over society, humans are divided into two groups--the Registered and the Unregistered. Registered humans are required to attend a bloodletting once a month in order to feed their vampiric masters. Unregistered humans are free from the obligation to "donate," but the freedom comes with a price; while Registered humans are provided with food cards, Unregistered humans are not, and the penalty for stealing food is death.

This is the world Allison Sekemoto survives in Julie Kagawa's The Immortal Rules. She lives on the edge of the city of New Covington in the slums, scrounging for food and trying to avoid becoming a vampire's prey. She vows that she'll never be anything like the soulless monsters that treat her species like cattle, but when a food raid goes terribly wrong and Allie is left dying in the street, she must make a choice--she can either die for good, or wake up again as the very demon she despises.