Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday

Rating: 5/5 (It was amazing!)
Pages: 320
Genre: Murder Mystery


Summary (from Goodreads.com)
Hartley Grace Featherstone is having a very bad day. First she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with the president of the Herbert Hoover High School Chastity Club. Then he's pegged as the #1 suspect in a murder. And if that weren't enough, now he's depending on Hartley to clear his name. Seriously? Not cool.

But as much as Hartley wouldn't mind seeing him squirm, she knows he's innocent, and she's the only one who can help him. Along with her best friend, Sam, and the school's resident Bad Boy, Chase, Hartley starts investigating on her own. But as the dead bodies begin to pile up, the mystery deepens, the suspects multiply, and Hartley begins to fear that she may be the killer's next victim.

My Thoughts
There’s nothing more comforting than a murder mystery with a character with your name in it that happens to be an airhead, and then later is murdered. Yay me!

Despite Deadly Cool’s odd plot about a girl helping clear the name of her boyfriend, ahem, correction ex-boyfriend who cheated on her, the story turned out to be quite interesting, and actually a good read. The book came with some witty humor while being able to hold its serious context.

Although, it was cliché in parts referring to Nancy Drew and a few stereotypical characters that were easy to pick out from the crowd, I felt the main character, Hartley, had a lot to offer and I enjoyed reading about what she had to say and what she felt, regardless of her pathetic inability to lie about her sneaking around.

All in all, this light-hearted murder mystery was a nice change from the paranormal young adult novel swarming the bookshelves of bookstores, while being fast-paced and easy-to-read.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

 

Rating: 3
Pages: 214 (depending on the version you read)
Genre: Coming of Age



Summary (from Goodreads.com)

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories—particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme—With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.


My Thoughts
Now that I’ve read Catcher in the Rye, I’m starting to see a little bit of Holden here and there in the books I read. I think Holden is a lonely, lost teenager, and an angry one at that. I like him because he doesn’t edit what he has to say when he talks, he’s blunt. But I don’t like him because he is sort of a hypocrite. I also got tired of the “Goddamn’s” in the story, yet the “phony’s,” although tired of them, actually amused me.

I read this book for English, and I think that’s why I didn’t get as much as I could have out of it. I felt like it was work to read it and of course, I would have read it even if it wasn’t for English, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it on my own terms.

But if I wrapped it all up, I would say that the book is extremely negative, yet is funny. I think that everyone can find a something about Holden that they can relate to. The parts of Holden that I found myself relating to, were the fact that he didn’t care about being popular and being antisocial was what he was okay with. I found that even though being alone is nice, that you do get lonely, and then you want to talk to someone. And it doesn’t matter who it is really, especially when you’re alone. But, I don’t think I would ever in this lifetime find myself talking to nuns. Personally, sometimes I felt if I were sitting in a coffee shop or somewhere and Holden came up to me and wanted to buy me a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) I would wonder what his intentions were, and think “weirdo” and then possibly eventually come to the conclusion that he’s simply lonely and not some creeper, or up to something.

Overall, the book was interesting, gross in parts, grossly hilarious in others, and I still feel like I missed out on a bunch of what Holden was saying and what was happening, so I’ll return to the novel in time. Meanwhile the phrase “Goddam skates” continues to ring in my head for some crude reason.

Disclaimer

*Disclaimer*
The summaries of most of these books are from the back of the books, although some of them I have altered and rewritten.

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex

Rating: 2/5 (It was okay)
Pages: 324
Genre: Supernatural, Humour

Summary (from book)

Doug Lee is undead quuite by accident--attacked by a desperate vampire, he finds himself being cursed with being fat and fifteen forever. When he has no luck finding some goth chick with a vampire fetish, he resorts to sucking the blood of cows under cover of the night. But it's just not the same.
Then he meets the new Indian exchage student and falls for her--hard. Yeah, he wants to bite her, but he also wants to prove himself to her. But like the laws of life, love and high school, the laws of vampire existence are complicated--it's not as easy as studying Dracula. Especially when the star of Vampire Hunters is hot on your trail in an attempt to boost ratings....
Searing, hilarious, and always expected, Fat Vampire is a satircal tour de force from one of the most original writers of fiction today.

My Thoughts

The good:

1. I really love the cover of this book. It's unique and creative and very eye-catching.

2. The summary and reviews on the back of the book were convincingly funny and appealing.

3. It had some parts that did make me laugh-out-loud and I was genuinely interested in Doug's conflicting situation. And a good start in the plot.

4. Jay is my favourite character. Although he was a bit cliche character-wise, I still enjoyed his company.

 The bad:

1. The book went bad after the first sixty or so pages. The interest rate really dropped for me and the book started focusing on diffrent things. I really wished it would have focused more on the main character instead it begins to more greatly focus on Segal and I'm left wondering isn't this supposed to be about Doug and his fatness, his thirst for blood and issues with girls?

2. I began to feel very disconnected with the characters and I didn't feel attached the them or the story at all.

3.  The stroy began to throw in all this random stuff about a vampire hunter TV show and a vampire mentoring program among other things. And I'm sitting there wondering where did all this come from? What happened to Doug being fat and drinking from cows?

4. I wasn't too crazy about the ending. It didn't leave me feeling satisified. The book in all didn't do it for me really.

Overall, the book was unique, much different from anything I've read. It was funny, which I liked, however, the story just didn't satisfy me.