Vampire Crush

The first book I will be reviewing is Vampire Crush by A. M. Robinson. First of all, may I say that this is possibly the lamest title in the history of ever?

SPOILER ALERT! SHE GETS A CRUSH ON A VAMPIRE!

Also, the cover is some kind of weird glittery bat bead thing resting on its side with a giant shadow that I think is supposed to look menacing. I don't even pretend to understand that. These vampires don't turn into bats anyway.

I loved it already. I sat down with a can of peaches and began to read. (I like peaches, okay?!)

It starts out with a girl who wants to be editor in chief for her high school's newspaper. Her name is Sophie McGee, or as I like to call her, Bella 2.0. She's got family issues of sorts - sort of mean-spirited stepmom and absent-minded father. Her stepsister is a fashion freak but she really isn't too bad. I kind of admire in books when they play against the stereotypes; her stepmom isn't all-out horrible and her stepsister means well at the end of the day.

On the first day of school Bella 2.0 arrives to discover that there is a group of foreign exchange students at their school - no one really knows where they're from or why they're hear, but one of them is named Vlad.

Okay, can I just hit the pause button right there? VLAD? Seriously? You couldn't have thought of something SLIGHTLY less obvious? We readers are not entirely stupid, you know. I mean, you named the book "Vampire Crush," for crying out loud. We got it. They're freaking vampires.

Continued. Obviously anyone new and foreign is automatically mysterious and probably very bad (xenophobic much?), so Bella 2.0 sets out to figure out what exactly is going on here. Oh, did I forget to mention? The school newspaper also happens to be investigating some missing blood from their recent blood drive.

HINT, HINT.

Bella 2.0 is given the assignment to write a "Welcome to School" sort of article basically giving really shallow bits of information about the new students, but it's harder than one might think. After around eighty pages, she has figured out the following:

1. They all hate her.
2. Vlad is dating her sister and asks creepy questions.
3. Violet spends waaaay too much time reading Seventeen.
4. They all know each other (even though they are supposedly foreign exchange students from other countries).
5. Her assignment is pretty much down the toilet because they all hate her and none of them will cooperate with her interview.

Let's get sidetracked for a few minutes. There's also the abandoned house next door - but wait, it's not really abandoned! Her old friend from grade school has moved back in. Secretly. In the middle of the night. Without telling anyone. Oh, and also he hasn't been going to school. And his parents are dead.

*stage whisper* P.S. - He's a vampire!!!

Anyway, after all this setup there's something that sort of vaguely resembles a plot but more closely actuates a blatant ripoff of Twilight except with the main character turning out to be the Lost Child something-or-other that can resist vampire charms or something like that.

It ends with their making out on a rooftop and my still having a third of the way to go through my can of peaches. Which I am still eating, by the way. They're good. Much better than this book, but then again a lot of things are much better than this book and that's not really fair to the peaches. They deserve better.