Title: Boys That Bite
Author: Mari Mancusi
Year of Publication: 2006
Genre: YA, fantasy
Pages: 262
First Line: "You know, being bitten by a vampire one week before prom really sucks."
Summary: My mom is so going to kill me if she finds out I'm turning into a vampire.
Okay, so technically she can't because I'm immortal. Well, not yet. See, due to the worst case of mistaken identity with my dark-side-loving twin sister at a Goth hangout called Club Fang, Magnus, a vampire hottie, went for my innocent neck instead of hers. Now, if I don't reverse it in time, Magnus will be my blood mate forever and I'm doomed to be a blood-gulping, pasty, daylight-hating vampire. Believe me, it seriously bites.
After the unfortunate slaying of the vampire leader, it's up to me, my sister, and Magnus to find the one thing that can solve my problem -- the Holy Grail. No joke. I seriously hope I can get out of this in time because, somehow, I scored the hottest prom date in my school, the mouth-watering Jake Wilder. And I do not want to be a vampire for the prom -- let alone the rest of eternity.
Source: Back of book
Review: This has been on my TBR list for awhile. It started off really badly. I was tempted to put it down but I decided since it had been on the list for so long, I'd soldier through. I don't know if I'm glad that I did, but I don't feel it was a complete waste of time. It definitely improved, especially about half-way through it got much better. The ending was awful, but I was much more pleased with it than, say, Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer. Vampire fiction has become very popular recently because of Meyer and usually the stories follow a "girl-meets-boy-in-some-kind-of-science-class, boy-seems-to-hate-girl, girl-likes-boy-anyway, blah blah blah." At least this one strayed from that and was original in plot. Characters, however, were quite unoriginal, especially in the physical description department. You'll see what I mean if you read it. BEGIN SPOILER -- A QUICK IDEA OF THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE Basically, Mancusi described every single vampire character to look like some well-known person already. Orlando Bloom was mentioned to be like Magnus, Lucifent was described as Haley Joel Osment and another character described as Gandalf the Grey. Come on. Be original. I mean, she didn't even give a REASON. If there had been like some magical thing that made you look like the "celebrity" of your choice when you turned into a vampire, sure, that'd be okay. But there wasn't even an explanation. A case of laziness? You bet. END SPOILER. Other than that, another thing that was really annoying was the narrator's use of netspeak in speaking. She used "OMG," I think "WTF" was used at one point. . . I don't mind things like "TMI" because I feel like that's been around longer than "OMG" and stuff, but that was super annoying. I don't know if I'd recommend it, but there were some parts of the book that were definitely better and stood out. Basically, the beginning of the book was godawful, the middle was better and in some spots, much better, and the end was just as godawful as the beginning.
Worst part: Unoriginality with the characters was a real downer.
Best part: It took place in NH, where I live. It didn't mention anywhere that I would've recognized (if any of it was real) except for some town names and the air port, but I always enjoy reading books about New Hampshire. The author grew up here, but I still don't think the characters are a fair/accurate representation of New Hampshire people.
Grade: C
Other Books by This Author: Girls That Growl, and Stake That!
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