Frostbite

Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2) by Richelle Mead

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is totally my guilty pleasure series. Vampires in a school? Good vampires who rarely drink blood and don't quite sparkle? Sounds really lame on the surface, but after reading the first Vampire Academy book, I actually got pretty hooked, and it's all thanks to Rose. She's a trash-talking, confident, sexy and fun heroine, very unlike the sullen, useless and perpetual victim that is Bella Swan (I mention her because this book series seems to be taking that mantle of Twilight's successor). Rose is totally the kind of story main character I'd want my daughter, if I had one, to strive to be like. She's not perfect, she curses, she lusts for boys. She's not perfect, and she kicks ass, and that's what makes her so awesome. She's not looking for that Prince Charming on a white horse. She'll save her own damn self, and that's what makes her romance with Dimitri so much more interesting. She may want him to screw her into next week, but she's not swooning before him. She won him by having that strong backbone of hers.

The secondary characters in this series are also pretty interesting. Lissa's pretty generic, but she plays well of Rose's recklessness. This second book also brought in some really interesting scenes with Rose and her mother, and we finally got to see some evil vampires, and Rose dispatched them with typical badassery, like decapitating them both with a rusty sword.



Honestly, I can't wait to read the third book.



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A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There are moments where you're reading a book, and the narrative describes your thoughts about yourself so perfectly that the floor comes out from under you, and you say "Whoa." That happened twice while reading this book. A friend of mine recommended it on Facebook, so I thought I'd give it a whirl, and the book will stick with me forever because I was this girl. I still am this girl, in certain ways. Not quite as into anime/ninja stuff, not quite as awkward, but still. The line "There is a person somewhere in the world who actually considers me kissable!" is one that I still wonder about as far as myself, and I've often stood in front of the mirror having the exact same thoughts as Cassandra. "But, I kept staring, as if to answer the question: What had she seen in me that I hadn't seen?" I've lived that moment. I still live that moment.

The story also touched on the aching loss of a friend at such a young age, where everyone's supposed to be invincible, where you don't have to worry about moving past crippling loss. Where your own identity is a terrifying thing, and where a belief in God is reconciled with a belief in the self. Cassie learned that you have to move on from the past, whether it's good or bad. She had to leave behind the greatest friend in her life, and she had to leave behind the idea of her bully, or else she wouldn't have discovered herself, and what it is to love in the wake of death.



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Still Missing

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I completely *devoured* this book. I'd been waiting a really long time to read it (the library's wait list was pretty insane), and I was spellbound. I've read several books about a woman being kidnapped, but this stood out because it was the aftermath, rather than the actual act, that the book followed. I'm sure there are other books out there in the vein of trying to put a life back together that has been utterly destroyed by an abduction, but this is the first one that I've read, and I found that aspect of the novel even more heartbreaking than the beatings and rapes that Annie had to suffer (not making light of those, either). I also found it really interesting that while 'The Freak' had done so much awful stuff to Annie, I found her mother to be the bigger villain, and reading her selfishness and oblivious cruelty masked as her own pain about being in the shadow of her sibling made me angry. The Freak's psychosis was definitely interesting, but Lorraine's was far more chilling in its self-centered superficiality.



I also found the parallels between The Freak and Annie in terms of being screwed over by their mothers rather interesting and haunting, as well as the beautiful and sad parallel of Annie's relationship with her mother compared to her relationship with her dead daughter. This book told the tale that most kidnapping stories don't - that you're never really found. That person who was kidnapped and brutalized vanishes forever, and leaves behind a new person in the husk of the old, and a wide gap will constantly exist between them.



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Dead Witch Walking

Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison:

3 out of 5 stars

I've read on this site that the later books in this series get better. That leaves me pretty stoked, because I enjoyed Dead Witch Walking. It wasn't a revolutionary book, but it felt very fleshed out in terms of its mythos. It left me wanting to know more about characters like Nick, and especially Trent. There's been a hole in my reading life for a series in this vein, since the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton aren't doing it for me anymore. Rachel is plucky and stubborn in a way that skirts being annoying, but that's what makes her real. Am I wrong for wanting/hoping that Harrison explores the sexual tension between Rachel and Trent? I also find Ivy an interesting character because her motives are so veiled, and not in that stereotypical emovamp way, either. She seems far more human about those things, and that's what makes her so intriguing, because it goes hand in hand with her vampism.