Sucks To Be Me by Kimberly Pauley

I return after my two-week hiatus with a book that I LOVE. A book that came out last year and isn't nearly as well-known as it deserves to be: Sucks To Be Me by Kimberly Pauley, in which Mina Hamilton's parents want her dead. Well, undead. Maybe. They're vampires, and now Mina has to decide if she wants to be one too.

There are boys and dates in it for you Twilight fans, but I'd never say it's a Twilight read-alike or even "like Twilight." It's funny, and touching, and realistic, and there's no wangst. And did I mention how funny it is?

The book starts off sort of boring and pop-y, but hang in there for two or three chapters. There are a lot of pop culture references but they're relevant, the ones I was actually thinking of rather than trying to hard to work them into the narrative in an attempt to be hip. The vampire references are updated and modern: Be honest, when someone says "vampire" you probably think of Twilight and Buffy now, not ghastly specters clawing their way up from the ground. Pauley layers both ideas, and you can tell she really likes the genre she's writing in and she's conversant with it.

There are a lot of great, quirky, realistically deep characters, and the plot is straightforward but detailed. I loved Mina and I think I'd love her just as much if she was a real person, along with all of her friends and family. I'd love to hang out with her and she's an amazingly loyal person to the people she loves.

Let me say one more time that this book is HILARIOUS. It was just under 300 pages, but I wouldn't've minded if it was 3000. Luckily there's a sequel in the works for next year. (Humor isn't something that can be explained easily, so check the book out for yourself. :) )

If you like this you might like ghostgirl, although I felt it was heavily in the camp of "trying way too hard to be cool and failing completely." The book itself is gorgeous though, I want whoever designed that to design my book someday. A slightly younger boy-targeted version of this might be the Vladimir Tod series.

You can read my interview with Kimberly here!

Buy Sucks to Be Me