By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Action & Adventure (YA), Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Mystery & Suspense (YA), Supernatural & Horror, Supernatural & Horror (YA), Young Adult Book Reviews
With: 0 Comments

“Vampires are meant to be glamorous and powerful, but I’m here to inform you that being a vampire is nothing like that. Not one bit. On the contrary, it’s like being stuck indoors with the flu watching daytime television, forever and ever.  If being a vampire were easy, there wouldn’t be a Reformed Vampire Support Group.  …God I’m sick of it.” And so we meet Nina; a fifty-one year old vampire who’s had a chip on her shoulder since she was infected at the age of 15.  Tired of a listless, sickly  life stuck in her mother’s house, Nina writes a vampire adventure series with aRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

In one word: Delightful! Rescuing Seneca Crane is Susan Runholt’s second Kari + Lucas Mystery.  She again delivers a action-packed, clever, well-structured mystery.  Kari and Lucas are perceptive, interesting, self-sufficicient teenagers with whom girls will enjoy spending time solving mysteries and just hanging out. Kari and Lucas are on a trip to Scotland with Kari’s mom. She’s there to interview a piano-playing teen prodigy, Seneca Crane.  At first, Kari & Lucas think Seneca will be too talented to relate to, but soon after meeting her and her over-protective parents, they decide she needs to be rescued from her restrictive life.  What they don’t realize is that they’ll soonRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

Rita Murphy’s latest novel, Bird, blends magical realism and mystery in telling the story of a girl easily carried away by the wind; a grim secretive widow; and an ominous house on a cliff. Miranda has no memory of where she came from – only that one day a huge gust of wind picked her up and brought her to Widow Barrows and Bourne Manor.  The Widow outfits Miranda with steel boots to keep her on the ground and forbids her leaving the house, but show her no other warmth or kindness. Bourne Manor is also a cold, grim place, full of foreboding, secrets and menace.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense, Sci Fi & Fantasy
With: 0 Comments

In Timothy Mason’s first novel, The Last Synapsid, we visit Faith, Colorado. It’s a quiet town, but this spring, a mysterious creature is lurking on the mountain.  What is it, and what does it want? Only Rob and his best friend, Phoebe, are brave enough to investigate.  What they find is the Last Synapsid—a squat, drooly creature that looks like a dinosaur crossed with a wienerdog—that claims to need Rob and Phoebe’s help. Having wandered into a time snag from his own era, 30 million years before the dinosaurs, “Sid” is chasing a violent carnivore called a gorgonopsid. The Gorgon refuses to return to his properRead More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Elementary Book Reviews, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

In Maze of Bones, The 39 Clues Book One, Amy and Dan Cahill are orphans whose world falls apart with the death of their beloved (and wealthy) grandmother, Grace. At the funeral, the lawyer calls together a select few of her many relatives into the mansion’s Great Hall and offers them each a choice: take a one-million-dollar inheritance and leave, or, instead of money, be given the first of 39 clues that “might lead you to the most important treasure in the world and make you powerful beyond belief . . . or it might kill you.” Amy and Dan take a clue, although they are mystified and confusedRead More →

By:
On:
In: Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

In G.P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box, Mariah Mundi has ended his time at the Colonial School without a family to go home to. His parents are missing, presumed dead, somewhere in the Sudan. So Mariah is sent to take up employment at the Prince Regent Hotel, a fabulous place filled with inventions and luxury.  Mariah is to be apprenticed to the Great Bizmillah, the magician at the hotel’s theatre. It doesn’t take long for Mariah and his new-found friend Sasha to discover some unwelcome secrets about the Prince Regent. Previous boys sent there from the Colonial School have all disappeared and to where,Read More →

By:
On:
In: Action & Adventure, Middle Grade Reviews, Mystery & Suspense
With: 0 Comments

Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant is a whirlwind adventure into the depths of a secret world of magic, ancient evil, and mystery.  I picked it up expecting a book targeted to boys (based on the cover art alone) and instead was pleasantly surprised to find the book perfect for girls who like action! 12 year old Stephanie Edgley inherits her eccentric uncle’s estate and fortune, and on her first night alone at the house is attacked and almost killed. She is saved by a man who was both at the funeral and the reading of the will, and who turns out not to be a manRead More →