DNF

My Life Next Door

June 18, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 16 Comments

By Huntley Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: June 14, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Source: Purchased

A gorgeous debut about family, friendship, first romance, and how to be true to one person you love without betraying another

“One thing my mother never knew, and would disapprove of most of all, was that I watched the Garretts. All the time.”

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase’s family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?

A dreamy summer read, full of characters who stay with you long after the story is over.

Goodreads Summary

I need a little help from (the cute version of) Britney Spears before I go any further.

(starts humming Oops I Did It Again)

I think I did it again
A book drove me nuts, a wall got a dent
Oh baby
It might seem like I’m tough
But it doesn’t mean that I don’t get love
Just losing all of my brain cells
That is just not typically me
Oh baby, baby

Oops!…I did it again
I quit one more book, my Kindle went dark
Oh baby, baby
Oops!…I thought it’d be fine
’til Sam $%& and ^% *$ and *@!~+
I’m not that tolerant.

As you can guess, this was a DNF. I made it to 76% and in the aftermath of a major event, I realized I was disgusted by Samantha. With no earthly reason for a happy ending I could believe in anymore, I threw in the towel and immediately felt better.

There will be spoilers since I’m going to have a very hard time explaining what pushed me over the edge here without them. I’ll put them all behind white text and I’ll warn you that they’re coming. They’ll all be sort of important to the plot/relationships, so if you’re planning on reading and absolutely don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read them!

Samantha and her older sister live alone with their snobby, driven, perfectionist politician mother. Their dad took off when she was pregnant with Samantha and that’s just fine with Mom, since his people weren’t the right kind anyway. They were like the Garretts, the people who moved next door: loud, messy and worst of all, terribly fertile and happy to be so. Thank goodness Samantha’s mom has that nice tall privacy fence. It wouldn’t do to have her girls consorting with that family.

The Garrett house is full of life and so different from her cold empty one that Samantha is drawn to it. She watches the family from her bedroom window, putting faces to the names. One night, Jase Garrett climbs her trellis – he’s been watching her too – and they start meeting on her roof. She’s embraced by his family, drafted into babysitting duty, become a trusted advice-giver and is warily accepted by another teenaged sister.

The Garretts are the best part of the story and the reason I kept reading. They’re wonderful, from little adorable George who’s full of doom and gloom statistics to Patsy who keeps saying, “boob” and “poop,” and poor Andy who’s stressing out about her first kiss. Jase is seventeen but could pass for someone out of high school with the jobs and responsibilities he has. He’s confident, loves his family and takes care of them, is sweet and funny with Sam and doesn’t hide any part of himself from her.

Sam lives in Bizarro World. Her mother is running for Senate and has had a personality transplant, becoming a robo-Republican toeing the hardline on issues she never touched before. She’s firmly under the influence of a sleazy pol that only has his interests at heart and has taken over. Sam’s older sister has been shipped off to a summer camp with her boyfriend at the suggestion of the pol – Tracy’s been in some minor trouble and it’s not a bad thing to have her out of the way. Sam has plenty of time to spend at the Garrett’s because no one in her house is there to care where she is. It’s odd that a woman hell-bent on getting elected to a major political office and a pol obsessed with pushing her there would let a seventeen-year-old girl wander around on her own. Hmm.

Prepare for the big blocks of white space because it’s spoiler time, folks! By the halfway point, I’d determined the following:

Samantha is a crappy friend to Nan: She never even told Nan she was seeing Jase until over a month had passed. Even after that, she barely spoke to her, only catching up with her when Nan’s boyfriend dumped her or did something. Then she found out **Nan was cheating, stealing Tim’s speech and cheating on her SATs and did nothing.** Some friend.

Samantha is a crappy friend to Tim: Tim was sick from his addictions, really, really sick. Sam knew it for a long time and while it wasn’t entirely her responsibility, she enabled him all of the time by helping Nan hide his behavior from his family. ** When he could have killed her and Nan while driving stoned and drunk, she helped hide it. When she found out Nan had stolen his speech, she didn’t tell him. She also helped him get a job as a lifeguard knowing he was a drunken stoner, knowing he was slacking off at the pool, putting people in danger.**

Samantha is a crappy daughter: She’s not entirely responsible for her mother’s life or her choices, but **she saw the things Clay (the pol) was doing with the other woman, she suspected some things he was doing were not all that legal, she knew he was encouraging her mother to do things she wouldn’t normally do, including some potentially improper/illegal things.**

But the worst. The worst, the worst, the unforgiveable for me:

Giant spoiler ahoy:

**Samantha’s mother was driving drunk with Clay and Samantha in the car. She hit Jase’s father who was walking by the side of the road and left him there, critically injured. When Jase called Samantha to come help watch the kids because he needed to race to the hospital, she rationalized it away – he couldn’t have been what her mother hit. When she found out Mr. Garrett had been hit on the same road her mother had been driving, she said nothing. When she found out the Garretts had no insurance because they couldn’t afford it, she felt badly but still was thinking it couldn’t possibly have been her mother. While Jase took comfort in her presence in his house, while she played with and babysat the Garrett children while they drilled a hole in his father’s head to keep the swelling in his brain down, she kept herself in la-la land, convincing herself that she wasn’t in the car that slammed into his father as he walked down the side of the road then left him to possibly die. When she finally figured out it had to be true, she kept silent.**

I’m sure for a lot of people there are ways in Fictionland that an author can work around such a horrible thing. A way for love to overcome all, for redemption and healing, grand gestures and a finale complete with a moral fit for a sampler. Not for me, not for this situation and this character. In that moment, with this character that I already was having trouble liking, I fully despised her. I didn’t care what her motivation was, what she wanted for herself. She was a coward who didn’t do the right thing for anyone but herself and I can’t bring myself to want a happy ending for a really good guy and a girl like that.

I don’t even want to summarize this one. It’s a DNF with a wish that I hadn’t started it. I’ve seen people compare this to Anna and the French Kiss – that makes my brain start to bleed.

(sorry for all that white space)

***My dear, dear friend Nick at Nick’s Book Blog and I almost always agree on our reviews (she has amazing taste). She liked this book a lot and wrote a great review explaining why – it’s always fun and wise to get all sorts of views of a book (hey, isn’t that what book blogging is about?), so go check out her review for a different opinion: Nick reviews My Life Next Door Thank goodness her awesomeness makes up for our book difference on this one. ;)***

I’m still right though. KIDDING, KIDDING!!

Filed Under: Contemporary/Romance, Debut Author Challenge, DNF, Reviews Tagged With: Huntley Fitzpatrick

Fated (Soul Seekers #1)

June 5, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 9 Comments

By Alyson Noël

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: May 22, 2012
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Publisher

Lately strange things have been happening to Daire Santos. Animals follow her, crows mock her, and glowing people appear out of nowhere. Worried that Daire is having a nervous breakdown, her mother packs her off to stay in the dusty plains of Enchantment, New Mexico with a grandmother she’s never met.

There she crosses paths with Dace, a gorgeous guy with unearthly blue eyes who she’s encountered before…but only in her dreams. And she’ll get to know her grandmother—a woman who recognizes Daire’s bizarre episodes for what they are. A call to her true destiny as a Soul Seeker, one who can navigate between the worlds of the living and the dead. Her grandmother immediately begins teaching her to harness her powers—but it’s an art that must be mastered quickly. Because Dace’s brother is an evil shape-shifter who’s out to steal her powers. Now Daire must embrace her fate as a Soul Seeker and find out if Dace is one guy she’s meant to be with…or if he’s allied with the enemy she’s destined to destroy.

Goodreads Summary

It was bound to happen. After a week or so of brilliant books that I breezed through, I slammed into one that I simply could not finish. It stings a little more than usual because I like Noël’s books in general and I’ve been trying to get through this for two days, thinking maybe I just wasn’t motivated. I finally tossed in the towel at the halfway mark – I was bored, aggravated and confused all at once and couldn’t go on.

Daire is a sixteen-year-old girl who travels around the world with her mom Jennika, who works as a makeup artist on movie sets. She’s just a normal, average girl who’s had relationships with a number of teen heartthrobs because she’s the kind of person who doesn’t care about their fame or expect anything long-term. She’s out celebrating her birthday in Morocco with her current fling when she has the mother of all breakdowns, seeing bloody decapitated heads, crushed crows and glowing men in the town square. She attacks the actor and most of the people in the square in a mindless frenzy and ends up heavily medicated back home in the U.S.

The glowing men have been trailing Daire for quite a while, long before the incident in Morocco. She’s also experiencing episodes where time seems to stop, but Jennika has refused to believe her until she’s contacted by Daire’s grandmother. Paloma hasn’t been in touch with either of them since the funeral of her son and Daire’s father, Django, but she says she knows what’s happening, what it means and how to handle it. Jennika’s options are either to put Daire in a mental institution or send her to Paloma – so she goes to New Mexico and her grandmother.

Now we’re only up to page 36-ish by this time. The story is moving along briskly, right? Daire is having dreams that are obviously visions of some sort of a boy with ice blue eyes that she instinctively knows is kind and feels that she loves (oh, dear). Her grandmother is sort of a medicine woman-slash-healer and she spends a good fifty pages being cryptic about what’s going on with Daire. Mixed in with all the hemming and hawing Paloma does, Daire manages to be sullen, difficult and childish. That was the reason I was aggravated.

I was confused because by the middle of the book, I still had no idea what Daire was supposed to be doing or be or what. She’s a “Soul Seeker.” Well what the heck was that? She’s going to save the world. She sees crows and decapitated heads, she freaks out, time stops sometimes, she had to do an exercise to find her animal spirit which involved dirt, bugs and dolphins and she had to quit eating sugar and processed food? She can see people’s true spirits apparently. Huh? How does that all add up into one package that means anything coherent?

Do I have to say a whole lot more than it was the likely love story that bored me? In the first ten pages Daire declares she doesn’t know what love is and in the first dream when she sees her mystery boy with a lean, muscular physique, black hair and ice blue eyes, she instinctively knows she loves him. Please authors, don’t do this. We like it when our characters get to know each other before they fall in love. Come up with another reason they felt connected, we’ll go with it!

My Summary: Not finishing a book is as painful to me as leaving dishes all over the kitchen counter (I’m hopelessly OCD), but Fated was more than even I could manage. The writing was overly flowery, the plot seemed meandering, I didn’t like Daire and I was irritated by the potential romance before the couple ever even met each other in the flesh. I won’t stop reading Noël, but I’m done with this series.

My Rating: DNF

Filed Under: DNF, Paranormal, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Alyson Noël

Sheltered

March 28, 2012 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 4 Comments

By Charlotte Stein

Publisher: Ellora’s Cave
Publication Date: March 9, 2012
Genre: New Adult/Young Adult-Mature
Source: Purchased

Evie has lived her entire life under her abusive father’s thumb. He controls everything. Where she goes to college, who she sees, what she does. But when she meets Van—a punk who shows her how different life could be—she realizes how much she’s been missing.

Van offers her excitement, protection, love…and most of all, sex—even if he’s at first reluctant to give her all the things she’s been craving. She wants to explore this new world of arousal and desire, but Van is only too aware of how fragile she is, how innocent…

And how much is at stake, when their love is forbidden.

Goodreads Summary

You absolutely have to ignore that cover. It doesn’t reflect the characters’ age (they’re 19), doesn’t look like them and really doesn’t even fit anywhere in the story. It may look like a typical Ellora’s Cave cover but I don’t know who was thinking it would fit on a Young Adult book. This is only the second book that is a true DNF for me since I started blogging – I stopped at the 55% mark so I can only go so far with my thoughts – but it’s getting some wildly positive reviews and I just wanted to share some of what made me quit reading. Because I like to be contrary, you know.

Evie has been spying on Van buying pot from her neighbor for a while when he finally catches her and goes over to talk to her. She turns into a stuttering mess at the sight of this boy from the other side of the tracks and he becomes the star of her nocturnal sexual fantasies which she can’t decide if she should be ashamed of or not. She becomes a little obsessed with Van, continuing to see him in fits and spurts as their relationship gets serious, he backs off, it advances, and he backs off, claiming he doesn’t want to rush her. I finally gave up at the point where they were in the middle of a “won’t rush you’ that involved oral sex, Evie hopping in bed naked and Van diving in after her after being reluctant about how fast things were moving.

From the moment I opened the book, I felt like there was no context for either character or their situations. It started with Evie spying on the drug dealer next door and moved to Van catching her. No history or interaction with Evie’s family – the synopsis promises some sort of abusive situation with her father and the closest that I got in my 55% was Evie musing about having taken a belt, being made to bike to Bible class and her worrying about her father hearing her nighttime fantasies about Van. Her parents appeared once in that 55%, the rest was mainly Evie and Van spending time at Evie’s house – wouldn’t she be even slightly worried about her parents or sister catching them, ever?

As for Van, halfway through the book, I know he lives in a bad part of the city where Chinese chefs chop the heads off of chickens, he’s got a motorcycle, he draws on his Chucks, gets tattoos and piercings and buys weed. I have no idea if he has family, a job, friends, or if he’s smart or dumb as a stump.

This was more sexually explicit than I thought it would be – for a girl that was “sheltered,” Evie is ready to dive in sex pretty fast. She was the aggressor several times and as a result, I didn’t even find the scenes all that steamy, just uncomfortable and sort of unbelievable.

My Summary: Maybe at the 56% mark something momentous happened that explained it all and was that magic moment where the book came together but I wasn’t willing to keep with this. Van and Evie barely had any conversations so I don’t know why they were a couple. Evie’s parents were barely even in the book so I don’t know why or how she was under their thumb. Other than his tats, piercings and pot smoking, I don’t even know why Van was such a rebel. This promised Rocky Road with extra fudge and delivered Pineapple – it really pained me to not be able to finish it.

My Rating: DNF

Filed Under: 2012 Ebook Challenge, DNF, New Adult Challenge, Reviews Tagged With: Charlotte Stein

The DNF Files for September

September 30, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

The DNF Files is our monthly post of books that we couldn’t finish but still felt we wanted to do some sort of review or make a comment about – books that hit our own personal STOP buttons. They’ll be a little shorter than our usual reviews, with the synopsis usually being limited to the one provided by Goodreads unless it’s either incorrect or insufficient. If there are major spoilers, they’ll be hidden behind collapsible tags.We just have one book for the File this month and it was mine. I’d first heard about Blood Song from another blogger this past summer and was so intrigued by it that I wrote the title down so I wouldn’t forget about it. The author is Australian and the book hasn’t been released here yet so I bought it from a really terrific site called Fishpond that has free worldwide shipping. The site I’ll be using again. The book? It’s gone to the second-hand bookstore for someone else to figure out.

Blood Song (Lharmell #1)

By Rhiannon Hart
Publisher: Random House Australia
Publication Date: September 1, 2011Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

I wanted to turn but I was held captive by the song on the wind. I’m coming, I told the voices. Please, wait for me.

When her sister becomes betrothed to a prince in a northern nation, Zeraphina’s only consolations are that her loyal animal companions are by her side – and that her burning hunger to travel north is finally being sated.

Already her black hair and pale eyes mark her out as different, but now Zeraphina must be even more careful to keep her secret safe. Craving blood is not considered normal behaviour for anyone, let alone a princess. So when the king’s advisor, Rodden, seems to know more about her condition than she does, Zeraphina is determined to find out more.

Zeraphina must be willing to sacrifice everything if she’s to uncover the truth – but what if the truth is beyond her worst nightmares?

Goodreads Summary

I’d like to think I got what the author intended to do with this story. There’s sort of a moody fairy tale feeling to it, something a little gothic. The imagery is always full of contrasts – Zeraphina’s home is a barren, frozen wasteland but the north that she’s drawn to is hot, lush and teeming with people. Her sister is girly and prone to falling in love easily while Zeraphina is boyish and more likely to get in trouble and argue with the opposite sex than anything else. There are some very pretty descriptions of Pergamia where Zeraphina’s sister goes to marry Prince Amis and the majority of the story takes place and some equally dark ones for Lharmell, the land Pergamia is at war with and where Zeraphina and Rodden find themselves trapped.

The execution failed in several places for me. I thought the characters were flimsy and childish. I kept expecting Zeraphina (who is 17) to add, “so there!” to the end of every sentence, maybe with a foot stomp or a dramatic drop to the bed. Rodden (who is 22) hates her on sight of course and contributes little to the story until the last fourth beyond appearing in scene after scene and telling her to get out of Dodge. Their relationship made less sense to me than the one between her sister and Prince Amis who fell in love in one day. There really are no secondary relationships to speak of – most of the book is in Zeraphina’s odd head with her disjointed and flat narrative.

I thought it was unfortunate that the fantasy elements were left so vague – it felt less like “use your imagination” and more like the author didn’t have a clear picture herself. The Pergamians are at war with the Lharmellians but no one’s allowed to talk about who they are, why they’re at war or anything about the archers on the parapets at night. It could have been mysterious but I ended up more bewildered. It would be helpful to know about some sort of history of Lharmell, some reason for Zeraphina’s compulsion to go north all of a sudden and some better explanation or reason for what the Lharmellians are. I have no idea who those people are and now I just don’t care. There was some mishmash of stuff happening over in Lharmell that I couldn’t even figure out when I quit. It made no sense and Rodden and Zeraphina’s motives for staying there made even less.

One last comment – I assumed this was targeted at a general young adult audience and there are obviously dark themes and some violence, particularly when Zeraphina and Rodden get to Lharmell. I don’t know if it’s accurate or not, but Fishpond has a note that this is for an audience of 10-14 yr.-olds. If I had to judge this strictly on a writing comprehension level I would say it should be fine for them but even with my progressive standards, there are things in here I’m not sure a 10 yr. old is ready for.

Filed Under: DNF, Reviews

Lord of Rage (Royal House of Shadows #2)

September 22, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

By Jill Monroe

Publisher: Harlequin
Publication Date: September 20, 2011
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Source: Netgalley

Princess Breena had been dreaming of her warrior lover when she was ripped from her Elden castle and thrown into a strange, dangerous realm. Lost and alone, she prayed for survival and vengeance for her stolen kingdom. She found both in a woodland cottage…in a dark bear of a man.

The golden-haired beauty had eaten his food and slept in his bed when Osborn found her. Though he wanted to awaken his virgin princess to carnal pleasures, Breena wanted more—including his warrior skills. Skills the once-legendary mercenary had long buried. Now Osborn had a choice—risk his life or deny his princess her fairy-tale ending.

Goodreads Summary

This was a DNF the first time I picked it up more than two weeks ago and if I didn’t already have the final two books in the series, I probably would have simply left it unfinished and moved on. It’s really only in fairness to the series that I picked it up again – obviously Breena’s story is one-fourth of the arc and unless I finished it I wouldn’t have any idea if she made it back to Elden or in what condition. So I picked it back up and had at it again. I made it to the end this time but the same issues cropped up for me again.

The general setup for each book: one day the Blood Sorcerer attacked the Royal Kingdom of Elden. Before they died, the King and Queen were able to create a spell together to protect their four children – Nikolai, Breena, Dayne and Micah. The Queen wove a spell of protection, sending the children away from the castle, each to one corner of the kingdom. The King added a spell so the children would seek retribution against the Blood Sorcerer. Because they were weakened, the spell didn’t work exactly as intended – they were sent far away with their memories of home and their siblings erased. All each knows now is the need to stay alive and seek vengeance.

Each of the stories also is written with a twist on a fairytale and there’s a fun little conversation between all four authors right off of the Paranormal Romance Blog (Royal House of Shadows Web Page). Monroe’s book is a play on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Osborn and his two brothers Bernt and Torben live in Ursa and Osborn is a berserker, a warrior who can merge with the spirit of a bear when he wears the special pelt he took from it during a ceremonial kill. Breena’s blonde, wanders into Osborn’s cabin, eats his oatmeal, breaks a chair and falls into the biggest bed. I don’t mind a twist – I love them. This wasn’t a nod or a wink this was grabbing me by my ears and shaking my head.

Breena’s story doesn’t exactly fit the mold of the series setup that I’m expecting and I don’t know if that’s a sign that the books are going to all be different and I misunderstood Showalter’s or if this is just…different. Breena was present when her parents were killed and saw them as they worked the spell and she had more memories intact when she was transported to Ursa, although she didn’t have all of them. She was also closer to Elden.

I haven’t opened the next book, Jessica Anderson’s Lord of the Wolfyn yet, so I don’t know how she’s going to handle the timeline, but it was confusing to try to match up Monroe’s vs. Showalter’s. In Showalter’s book,Lord of the Vampires, Breena’s brother Nikolai had already been away from Elden for twenty years before he regained his memories and was able to start back. Since he’s a vampire, the aging thing wasn’t an issue but again, he’d spent twenty years as a slave. Breena’s story began right after the attack and unless there’s some sort of wrinkle in time happening, events at the end suggested that Nikolai’s timeline may have caught up.

I never could make myself like Osborn. He was just so unpleasant to Breena and his brothers most of the time. He was rude, cranky and I thought the way he handled his attraction to Breena was pretty offensive. He thought he’d use her for sex then got ticked off when she wanted him to help her. He was angry at her for his attraction to her and warned her not to be alone with him, as if she was responsible for anything he did. I know it’s a common enough theme in romance novels, to make the brooding hero angry about being attracted to the heroine, but combined with his other less-than-charming attributes, for me this really did Osborn in. I liked Breena more the second time around, but only because I’d gotten further along and she evolved from the actual Goldilocks into more of a fighter.

My Summary: I’m not going to give this book a rating because if it hadn’t been part of a series it would have remained a DNF, even if there were some places that the story improved eventually. I stopped around the 20% mark the first time which I thought was pretty fair, even though I just can’t stand not finishing books. I’m glad I came back to it because I think it makes sense to have all the pieces for the series, but if this had been just one book, my TBR pile is just too big for a character that I really didn’t like and some plot issues that I felt went too far.

Filed Under: DNF, Paranormal Romance, Reviews Tagged With: Jill Monroe

The DNF Files

August 28, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

This past month my DNF pile was nearly half as tall as what I finished and a few of those even barely made it out of an F rating. It left me feeling like I had a decision to make – normally I would just consider it a horrible reading month, take a handful of Tylenol and move on but with a few books we read, both Cait and I felt like we needed to at least give abbreviated reviews.

And so The DNF Files was born. It’s only going to be a monthly feature – and if we’re lucky it won’t even be that. We’ll only be including books that really hit our own personal STOP buttons or to highlight a book that has something that we want to talk about. The reviews will be a little different than usual – we won’t be going too in-depth with our own synopsis unless it differs from the publisher’s and we’ll probably include more spoilers than usual. Anything that gives away an ending or a pivotal point will be hidden though so you can decide if you want to see it.

This month we have three books for the File. One is from Cait and two are mine:

Ward Against Death (Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer #1)
By Melanie Card
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Publication Date: August 2, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal

Twenty-year-old Ward de’Ath expected this to be a simple job—bring a nobleman’s daughter back from the dead for fifteen minutes, let her family say good-bye, and launch his fledgling career as a necromancer. Goddess knows he can’t be a surgeon—the Quayestri already branded him a criminal for trying—so bringing people back from the dead it is.

But when Ward wakes the beautiful Celia Carlyle, he gets more than he bargained for. Insistent that she’s been murdered, Celia begs Ward to keep her alive and help her find justice. By the time she drags him out her bedroom window and into the sewers, Ward can’t bring himself to break his damned physician’s Oath and desert her.

However, nothing is as it seems—including Celia. One second, she’s treating Ward like sewage, the next she’s kissing him. And for a nobleman’s daughter, she sure has a lot of enemies. If he could just convince his heart to give up on the infuriating beauty, he might get out of this alive…

Goodreads Summary

This book sounded really promising from the blurb, and I settled down with excitment hoping I would be able to enjoy myself. I didn’t, unfortunately. My main issue is that the copy that I received for review was not formatted properly. Specifically, there were no quotation marks to let me know the difference between a when a character was speaking out loud or just thinking to themselves. It was incredibly distracting, and I really had to focus on what was going on. Perhaps I could have looked past that, but I couldn’t get into the characters, I didn’t understand what was going on and the story just plain ol’ wasn’t interesting to me. If I’m going to work at reading a book, then I at least want it to be interesting.

I’m sorry to say, this was a DNF. Between the struggle with format and the boring story line, this book just wasn’t for me.

Damned (Crusade #2)
By Nancy Holder, Debbie Viguié
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: August 30, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal

Antonio would do anything for his beloved fighting partner Jenn. He protects her, even suppresses his vampire cravings to be with her. Together, they defend humanity against the Cursed Ones. But tensions threaten to fracture their hunting team and his loyalty—his love—is called into question.

With an even more sinister power on the rise, Jenn must overcome her personal vendettas.

Antonio and Jenn need each other to survive, but evil lurks at every turn. With humanity’s fate hanging in the balance, they must face down the darkness…or die trying.

Goodreads Summary

Damned is the second in a series and I think it would be perfectly fine to read on its own even though a huge amount of world-building is necessary to understand what’s happening. It’s all repeated here, so you’ll be fine. The highlights that you need to know are that vicious vampires have pretty much taken over a sort of post-apocalyptic world and while for a number of years there were groups of fighters trying to regain control, those numbers have dwindled to just a pocket here and there. It’s feared that the last group is the small one in Spain now led by Jenn and aided by “good” vampire Antonio.

To start with a positive, the authors’ writing style is very good and the scenes of the vampire attacks are chilling. There is a ton of action in the book and it’s well written. What ended up making this a DNF for me were issues with plotting and the relationships between the characters.

All of the characters in the team had some sort of unspoken crush or attachment to another member. There were a lot of heated glances, wild yearnings, worried searching during fights but apart from Jenn and Antonio, at least as far as I got in the book, no one ever acknowledged their feelings. Jenn and Antonio frustrated me for an entirely different set of reasons. It was the Thorn Birds, Emo Teen Vampire Style. She loved him but was uneasy with what he was and didn’t think he’d commit to her. He loved her but had promised himself to God and the Church, didn’t know if he could put that aside for her and knew his being a vampire upset her. Good grief. They’d lock eyes and it would set off a two page internal monologue from one of them about how tortured they were.

The team has its butt handed to it on a regular basis, which brings me to the plotting issue. It felt like the plot was on a loop that replayed over and over. The location changed and good and bad guys added, but the basics remained the same: the team (whichever parts of it) would be sent someplace where one or more of them would disparage Jenn as the team leader and/or Antonio for being a vampire. There would be some sort attack that took them by surprise and one, perhaps two team members would be so seriously injured that they would need healing from the witch in the group. These attacks would always be by something really bad – something that should have killed the team members, but in a case of the You Get Down, You Get Back Up Again trope, that would be unsportsmanlike.

I kept reading and reading thinking I was going to get to some really big exciting plot and character developments soon and was a little surprised when I looked down and saw I was only close to page 300 (this is a 544 page book). There was no way I was reading for another 244 pages. Sorry, this was a DNF for me.

Fury (The Fury Trilogy #1)
By Elizabeth Miles
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: August 30, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal/Horror

Sometimes sorry isn’t enough….

It’s winter break in Ascension, Maine. The snow is falling and everything looks pristine and peaceful. But not all is as it seems…

Between cozy traditions and parties with her friends, Emily loves the holidays. And this year’s even better–the guy she’s been into for months is finally noticing her. But Em knows if she starts things with him, there’s no turning back. Because his girlfriend is Em’s best friend.

On the other side of town, Chase is having problems of his own. The stress of his home life is starting to take its toll, and his social life is unraveling. But that’s nothing compared to what’s really haunting him. Chase has done something cruel…something the perfect guy he pretends to be would never do. And it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed.

In Ascension, mistakes can be deadly. And three girls—three beautiful, mysterious girls—are here to choose who will pay.Em and Chase have been chosen.

Goodreads Summary

Okay, this wasn’t technically a DNF for me, although when I got done I wished like crazy that I’d stopped when my stomach told me to a few chapters before the end. My comments here will probably have more spoilers in regular text than usual and there will definitely be some behind hidden text – so be warned before you keep reading.

Fury isn’t a badly written book nor is it one that I would warn any older teen against if you picked it up from the right place in a bookstore – emphasis on right place in the bookstore. This isn’t just a YA paranormal or fantasy or whatever. Imagine John Saul crossed with Hideo Nakata and it’s close to this.

Miles makes Emily and Chase into really likable characters. Chase is insecure, despite his looks and position on the football team. He’s dirt-poor and knows his “friends” are one excuse away from shoving him out of the in-crowd and he’s afraid if he can’t be part of it and the parties, he might miss out on his big chance at being seen by a recruiter. Emily is dazzled by her best friend’s boyfriend Dylan and thinks he’s been flirting back. She’s always been her friend’s Second, liked because she was liked. Dylan seems to feel something for Em too.

By the time the Furies show up and one targets Chase, you know something bad is going to happen. The one thing he’s desperate for is a date to a certain dance. He freaked out at the last party when he heard a girl had committed suicide and now everyone’s looking at him strangely so he thinks he’s got some recovery to do. So when the impossibly gorgeous Ty drops in his lap and mesmerizes him, it’s his dream come true. But he really is mesmerized. And she does some awful things to him. As the notes in his pocket say, “Sometimes you get what you deserve.”

Em’s story happens at the same time Chase’s does although they aren’t connected. Hers is pretty standard. Girl falls for scum, scum promises her she’s the only one, she finds out scum lied. In some bizarre universe, “sometimes you get what you deserve,” in equal measures applies to a girl who was naïve enough to kiss a dirtbag a few times as it does to Chase. This, I don’t get. Just one more reason I should have stopped reading because it was so ridiculously wrong.

I’m going to do what I wish someone had done for me before I read this and reveal what Chase and Em “deserved” according to the Furies. Keep in mind, Em kissed a boy that her girlfriend was dating. Chase did something sad and stupid but obviously, his punishment was ridiculous. I’m slapping it behind some white text in case you want to be as cranky about it as I was.

Chase remembered what he’d done to his former friend that he thinks may have led to her depression and her eventual suicide and he was forced to commit suicide by the Furies. Em realized at the end that she was in love with her male best friend (who also loved her). Her punishment was to lose true love – the Furies were going to kill him. She got them to spare his life but the deal was that he would stop caring about her and she would be tied to the Furies forever. What that meant wasn’t explained.

I don’t know if this belongs in the DNF Files or as just an D or F. It was depressing as hell to read. I had the same feeling in the pit of my stomach when I got done as I did every time I read an early John Saul and one of the murderous kids had killed everyone or after The Ring and all sorts of innocent people had been horribly killed for no reason. I was wondering where there was some sort of balance in this story. Was I supposed to believe Chase and Em were the same? In the next book, will there be a mass murderer and someone who stole someone’s juice box in the first grade? Yuck.