Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 54

Uninvited shapeshifter outstays his welcome, news at 11

41. Alone in the House – Edmund Plante

Erik with a “K” for kingly, apparently, gets invited in when Joanne has a party she didn’t want to have (thanks, Cindy) and then will not leave. Also, he can turn into a bird and a cat and a “foul smelling mist,” what a houseguest! Joanne thinks he’s a vampire, since he also hypnotizes her and makes her forget the young fellow she truly loves, Cliff, for his trunk-dwelling self.

After a car accident on their way to show the police the found property that is a trunk with Erik in it, Joanne ends up in the hospital, her parents come home, and the nurses tell her not to leave because there’s some escaped mental patient on the loose who killed a family by drinking their blood…but they do not mention if he has shape shifting powers.

[image error]

Thorfy’s fine with being in the house alone, he’s very confident in his abilities to ward off vampires or teenage party goers.

What, no Folger’s crystals?

38. Spellbinder – L.J. Smith

Sister magic fight! At some point, I want to see the witch that uses white magic wear a cool motorcycle jacket and seem sort of badass, because being good is, like, hard. Break those rules. Oh, wait. Anyway, guess which sister uses black magic – is it Blaise or Thea? Blaise…or Thea?

In some respects, Thea gets that leather jacket because she dates outside her species because of that soulmate principle thing that runs through all of these books. So she is nuanced and has some humanity, unlike Blaise, who consistently makes the same kinds of fun, reckless choices. Who hasn’t gotten someone to burn down a school? I mean, really, that’s like a first date prank. Yeesh. Of course, once Thea tells on herself and gets her jacket taken away, she has to drink the stuff that makes you forget.

[image error]

Duncan and Pickles were sisters during the time period when I did not have my own digital camera and wasn’t great with the one occasionally available. They also did not get along for terribly long after they were born, but Pickles was the reckless one. Orange and reckless.

Someone depicted research correctly- time for celebratory balloons and cake!

53. Someone’s Watching – Jessica Pierce

I’ve read a YA book from this time period with a similar plot before…but that one was not as easy to read as this one and involved one of those “I look real young” undercover cops almost dating the 17 year old who is 13 in her head because of that coma. Icky.

Thankfully, the prevalent policeman in this one is not trying to date the protagonist, a minor who saw her mother get murdered in a park when she was two and then sat on her body until she was found. Dark.

Anyway, just like in the other one, remembering who the mother’s killer is becomes the main focus. Cassidy chooses to utilize the help of her friend Rory (who is neither described as plain nor plump #feminism) and Rory’s friend Matt, the PI in training. Matt knows about things like the Hall of Records and scamming government employees into giving away people’s identifying information. There’s one microfiche mistress that gives him some shit and I do remember doing that when kids would ask to use the microfilm (we didn’t even have any fiche) machine at the public library I worked at. I would ask them what their research purpose was and that was quite the stumper. Research? Purpose? To be fair, that machine was not a toy and if it got fucked up, there was one dude in the entire state of Mississippi that I was aware of who could come fix it and only came like once a year, like Krampus and Santa. I know I have mentioned the difference between microfiche and microfilm and what’s on them several times on this blog – and for once someone got it right. Vital records like births and deaths do tend to be on fiche. FINALLY. Those words (fiche and film) are not interchangeable and this is the hill I will die on and then roll down like an unspooling reel of microfilm.

Moving on because everyone else probably wants to, Cassidy is having a harder and harder time with her traumatic memories and the way her mental health professional also happens to keep mentioning that she went catatonic when she was little and she could do it again. There are some moving parts to this story and it was a fun read overall and went to some unexpected places – like the hall of records.

[image error]

Belvedere is pleased with the depictions of research and several other things in this book.

Nobody’s listening

55. The Snow – Caroline B. Cooney

The second in the Fog-Snow-Fire trilogy about poor Christina being stuck with psychologically manipulative -and evil- adults while she’s just trying to go to school on the mainland is pretty decent. Although in the middle of the trilogy you already know who the villains are and that our heroine has essentially already escaped them once, there’s still more to go through. Nobody gets out of telling the truth consistently about danger and not being believed without some scarring. And Christina gets to watch her best friend become the next target… and is she hearing things or is there a maniac in the attic?

[image error]

Snuffy is considering the level of treacherousness in escaping from this pillow-island.

Kim was getting ready to be part of repeated economic crashes.

42. The Last Lullaby – Jesse Osburn

A baby thief hiding in plain sight! This was exceedingly short and yet managed to pack in a lot of things going on. Kim interns at her family’s newspaper, her twin Tim is riding around in police cars with one of the deputies or their Uncle Dare the main policeman, Kim is also interning at the hospital and manages to befriend the lonely nursery worker who buys Kim’s new baby sister presents without seeing her, the new nanny is stiff and bosses the children around, which is just what Beth Ann needs – it’s kind of a lot but it’s not that confusing. The main plot thread that’s dropped is that the stiff, bossy nanny doesn’t like the nursery worker who clearly murdered those people and stole that other recent baby…and yeah, did I mention a lot was going on? Daphne also probably ended up with pneumonia, it’s not a good idea to run with an exposed newborn in the rain, but it was a matter of circumstance.

[image error]

Pammy and Twiglet, clearly, also have a lot going on. I don’t know if they could work kidnapping or police ride alongs into their busy, busy coordinated napping schedule.

“He always wanted everything I ever had, including my face.”

46. Nightmare Inn – T.S. Rue

A one-woman red-headed jealousy-killing machine ghost – and Sebastian knew about her the whole time! Sheesh.

Anyway, this book starts off with some super teen dramatics coming out of Sarah – she’s done something. Last night. It was something she feels really guilty about. It makes her sick to think of going on the fishing trip with her sloppy boyfriend and her best friend and her neat boyfriend. Oh no! I mean, I don’t like camping, but nature is trying to kill me, not my guilty conscience.

Finally, after much mental hand-wringing, we find out Sarah likes her best friend’s boyfriend better. Okay then. She kissed him last night and now her hormones are overwhelming her and she’s kinda out of it, calling her friend Jodie by the name “Ellen” even though she knows no Ellens. Then she sees a phantom pink school bus when they’re driving on a rutted out road in a rainstorm and now there’s no fishing trip to go on because she leads them to The Arcadia Inn, this series’ version of the Hotel California, and her like sister-ghost the red-headed jealousy-killing machine. If only she hadn’t kissed Adam like every dramatic teen who realizes their feelings are leading them to a different boy!

[image error]

Ozma has nothing to feel guilty about.

In the 1990s, she wasn’t ready to ask for your manager.

12. Beach Party – R.L. Stine

It’s not a beach novel (or a ski novel, or a camping novel) without some random group coming up to new people and trying to start some shit. How else do young hetero teens meet on vacation? At the library? (Note of experience: No. Be quiet.) Anyway, Karen and Ann Marie are having one of those vacations where they haven’t seen each other in a year, but then Karen finds someone else’s boyfriend and doesn’t have time to be distracted by the actual friendship that brought her to this beach. She’s a shitty friend and clearly doesn’t have respect for invisible girlfriends. Perhaps that’s why the bodies start piling up, Karen, perhaps it’s your complete lack of scruples.

[image error]

“He has a girlfriend who isn’t there and innocuous name. Of course he’s garbage.” Mortemer’s judging imaginary teen behavior from his outdoors chair, conveniently placed indoors.

They say soulmate, I say trap.

35. Secret Vampire – L.J. Smith

Warning: This is the first book in the Night World series. The last book in the Night World series was to be published in 1998, but it still hasn’t come out yet. A second warning, as warnings must be given about the Night World in soulmate pairs: I, once again, did not read reprint editions of these books. Besides having super boring covers compared to the originals, once again modernization was done – but what they don’t realize when they do that is switching Walkman to iPod is dumb because they stopped making the best iPod (Classic) and everything becomes dated at some point. Let the children look it up. I shall give no more warnings for this series until it’s been like another year.

Anyway, like the less downer version of an “I’m sick, try not to love me too much” romance, lovesick vampire James turns his girlfriend with pancreatic cancer, Poppy. But now she’s an illegal vampire, so, their love is still forbidden. But! Is it? Couldn’t there be a deus ex machina to make Poppy a little more acceptable? Yes, there could. Her past. Her witchy ancestry. Phew.

[image error]

“But what about my witchy ancestry?” asks Salem.

A note on the upcoming season of text

[image error]

This is just a picture of Peregrine, but it comes with a warning. Or a curse. Maybe both.

I was just going to post the entirety of what I’m warning about in the caption text, then realized it might be too small. So now it’s out here. I am writing this towards the end of April in WI. I have mentioned many, many times on this blog that I am not good at breathing. I never have been and it comes up a lot in my daily life (especially when there’s a respiratory pandemic) and sometimes in fiction.

This is the preamble to saying that I haven’t been super able to concentrate on things that are usually fun for me, like making mixtapes, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I know I’m not the only one, but in a world where I have had my breathing compromised several times of late in addition to trying to get used to being more panicky than usual about that sort of thing for the foreseeable future, and I am working from home as well, I can’t do what I normally do even more so. So, I will proceed with my usual 80s and 90s YA reviews, but I am taking a plague year for the mixes because I wasn’t done with them and I don’t know when I’ll be able to concentrate sufficiently to get them sorted.

“This is not like I expected at all! We got totally lied to by our album covers.”

41. Damned – Chuck Palahniuk

I remember when this was being released and I heard that Palahniuk was going for some level of Judy Blume in Hell, which is right up my alley. And I definitely enjoyed this book more than the two exercises in fake language immersion that preceded it. There were a lot of fun bits in 13 year old Madison’s trip to hell and really, it seemed like her home life was terrible as the neglected child of two A-listers. She’s no Bill and Ted, but she sure is dark and funny for a not particularly teenagery teenager.

[image error]

Merricat’s Bogus Journey would be a pretty accurate shorthand for the time period in which liver cancer developed and killed her. She also would have beat Death at Battleship given the opportunity. Also, I would like a robot Merricat please. Westworld-level accuracy only, no storyline bullshit for her though.

52. Doomed

The consequences of missing curfew – one year as a ghost to figure things out for Madison. It’s like she’s grounded as a ghost. Very teen. But Madison seems even less like an actual teen in this one. The thing is, a teen might have been a bad choice for the concept of satirizing The Divine Comedy, which might also be why this supposed trilogy has no last book. Or maybe it was replacing the epic poem format with blog posts. I know that when I decided to read The Divine Comedy while in between 6th and 7th grade, it was a bad idea. I read it, didn’t get a single reference and didn’t understand most of it because I wasn’t raised religiously and was not a frequent epic poem reader and also I was, um, 11, and then I went back to reading R.L. Stine and Foxtrot compilations to get my Summer Reading Program prizes. I believe I chose the cup with the library logo and a Pink Floyd cassingle of whatever the single was off of The Division Bell. Did I like it? No. I’m actually not a Pink Floyd person. I tried. I am not cool with most prog, no matter how supposedly cool that prog is. Anyway, this one was not as “fun” as Damned, but it’s supposed to be the middle of a trilogy, so it wouldn’t be. The last book is…in purgatory?

[image error]

The only start of the apocalypse I’ll accept is the one where guinea pigs get all huge like in the South Park episodes “Pandemic” and “Pandemic 2: The Startling,” it’s the best one. Especially if Merricat got to be a guinea bee.