I know, I know, “who is this Kearsten person and why is she posting here?!?” Yes, it’s been awhile, but I’m finally making another appearance here, even if I’m slacking by blogging about two books that are smack-dab in my genre of choice: the supernatural!(cue spooky music). However, these books do differ in subject matter: one is a graphic novel involving slacker vampires, while another is a soon-to-be-released novel about a teenage girl who is dying to be popular and gets her wish – sadly, she gets the dying part, not the popularity.
Life Sucks, by Jessica Abel, Gabriel Soria and illustrated by Warren Pleece, tells the story of Dave Miller, undead night-manager at Last Stop, a vampire-owned convenience store. Turned when the vampire owner (and Dave’s new Vampire Master), Radu, needed to fill the night-manager position, Dave’s vampire life is boringly routine, consisting of sleep, blood from a bottle and the monotonous manning of the Last Stop’s front counter. The only highlights of his evenings are when Rosa, a goth vampire-wannabe, drops in for snacks with her fellow goths. It’s not until a mean-spirited fellow vamp, Wes, decides to compete with Dave for Rosa’s affections, that Dave’s unlife gets complicated. The view of vampire life in Life Sucks is very different than in, say, Twilight, but Dave’s boredom, his frustration with a literally dead-end job, an obsession with a Spanish soap opera and his fierce crush on Rosa – not to mention his refusal to feed from the living – help make Life Sucks charming and funny. It’s a quick read and you, like I, will finish thirsting for more…
Now, I’m kinda cheating with this next book – I haven’t actually read it, though I did get a chance to “sample” two chapters of Ghostgirl, an August release by Tonya Hurley. The “ghostgirl” in this story is Charlotte Usher, a high school senior who, on the first day of school, chokes to death on a Gummy Bear right after finding out that she’s won the BEST kind of lottery: her hot crush Damen as a lab partner. Talk about life sucking! From the chapters I read, it seems Ghostgirl will be funny and snarky, though there were a couple of references that struck me as a bit old for a teen audience (Young Frankenstein? An old Twilight Zone episode? Election? I knew what she was referring to, but I’m...old.) Truth be told, the biggest reason I’ve already put a hold on Ghostgirl is the promotional material I received for it while at Comic Con this past weekend (yes, I’m a geek, and holy cow was it fun!): cute and ghostly black and hot pink temporary tattoos, and a teeny metal tin (containing gummy bears, of course) upon which is inscribed, “WARNING: EATING MAY RESULT IN SUDDEN DEATH AND EXTREME POPULARITY.”
Hee!
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