My last 5 books: Vampires and fangirls

1. Guilty Pleasures, by Laurell K. Hamilton. Interestingly I found out about this book series from a Buzzfeed list over the best literary vampires. It's the first book in the Anita Blake series and she feels sort of like a female Harry Dresden, but with less magic and more guns and not as much brains. I like it. Not sure I really like the mind control thing the vampires can do, but I really like Jean-Claude so far. As for the investigative element there really wasn't much going for Anita, she went down all the wrong avenues and only discovered who the killer was by having him literally reveal himself to her when he tried to kill her. So just dumb luck (or dumb bad luck?) Anita complains a lot, is scared a lot and just goes 'fuck it all' a lot. The best characters in this story were Phillip and Jean-Claude, and they're mostly absent. The reading is fun and fast-paced, but comes off as very shallow and without much substance. It's sexy and bloody, but also an action movie in book format. Did I have fun reading this? Yes. Will the story or characters stay with me? Probably not.

2. The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening & The Struggle, by L.J. Smith. I love the TV show and wanted to read the books after the show finished. It took me a while to get into it, mainly because Elena is extremely unlikeable for the first half of the first book. She only wants Stefan because he's the only boy at the high school who doesn't fall over himself to be with her. Like come on. There are some glaring differences between the books and the show. Aunt Jenna is called Judith and she has a fiancé named Robert who doesn't exist in the show. Jeremy doesn't exist in the books, instead Elena has a baby sister of four years old called Margaret. Caroline is a bitch throughout the books and Elena's main antagonist, instead of one of the girl trio as she is in the show. Instead there's a fourth girl called Meredith who's friends with Elena and Bonnie. Bonnie is still a witch and the most innocent and childlike of the bunch and she's infatuated with both Alaric and Damon. Katherine is stone-cold dead in the books and doesn't show up as an antagonist. The whole doppelganger thing isn't in the books. Stefan and Damon are five hundred years old and from Renaissance era Italy and not from Civil War era US. The books take place in the 90s and Elena fussing for a call from Stefan means she has to stay put at home where there's a phone. Stefan doesn't live at the ancestral home of the Salvatores (they are not a founding family), instead he lives at a boarding house. As for the events in the story they play out pretty much the same as in the show. Elena's parents are dead. Stefan shows up hoping to find a place among the humans of a small town. Damon follows him and weird things start to happen in the town. Stefan gets blamed. Everybody is enamoured with Damon because he compels everybody he meets. Teacher gets killed, Alaric shows up. Everything comes to a point at the Founder's Day celebration. Stefan and Elena both seem to think that Damon is behind everything weird that's been going on, but with the way the book ended dare I say... there's an Original lurking? Also the town is called Fell's Church and not Mystic Falls. I'm actually excited to read the continuation. 

3. The Ouroboros Cycle Book 1: A Monster's Coming of Age Story, by G.D. Falksen. This book starts out intriguing but then falls into sort of a lull until Babette meets Iosef, which is about halfway. The prologue, while being intriguing, has almost no bearing on the story until the very end. The story starts when Babette is sixteen and she is about to be introduced into the Society of high-socety 19th century France. She hates it and would rather read than dance. She meets Korbinian, a German officer of noble blood, and they quickly fall in love and although they have to jump through some hoops to be together their path seems plainly laid out before them. That doesn't go according to plan. Fast-forward a few years and Babette ends up having to flee from France. Her friend Iosef Shashavani agrees to help her under the pretense that they are to be married and he takes her to Georgia. This is when the interesting things start to happen and the book comes into its own as a vampire story. As the first part of a quintology this book leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but I really like many of the characters. Babette is badass. Iosef is dreamy. Korbinian is so sweet, and the hidden world which is only partially glimpsed in this book promises to be very interesting, so I'm excited to keep reading this series. 

4. Ship It, by Britta Lundin. I went into this book not sure if I'd like it. I was expecting it to be too much. Too girly. Too stupid and simpy and mushy. But instead I found something super relatable. Claire is me at sixteen. The fangirl experience of reading and writing fics and just gushing all over the internet for your OTPs and the fandom and the content and the actors and just having so many feels for things that aren't technically real. I fell in love with the book at the description of Claire at the first convention panel: "There's a girl in the front row who is all-out bawling, and I know how she feels. Emotions are, like, leaking out of my pores. Crying actually seems like a pretty minor reaction. All things considered, I might literally explode. 'Local girl explodes at Boise Comics Convention. Doctors mystified, but witnesses suspect she had too many feels. Details at eleven.'" And that's just page 64. Everything in this book is relatable. Trying to explain fandom to people outside of it. Trying to explain slash or ships or OTPs... It's such a struggle and I've been there. I'm there, still. How the book attempts to explore sexuality and sexual awakenings as well as just the feeling of belonging you get when you're in a place like a convention where everybody there just gets you because they're there for the same reason... It made my heart swell because I feel it. I'm one of you. And I never had the online presence Claire does because I never dared publish my fics. But oh, I feel it. The end had me straight up crying. Feels. 

5. Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell. When I started this book I really wasn't sure if this would be a book I would end up finishing. But I endeavoured to give it 100 pages like I usually do. I didn't even notice the 100 page mark. At that point I was so pulled into the story that I had trouble putting the book down. I deeply relate to Cath and this is her coming of age story, her growing up experience, and she does some serious growing in the course of the novel. She's shy and quiet and anti-social and insecure in the beginning, but she ends up more outgoing towards the end. She's still shy and insecure, but less withdrawn about it and she dares to lean on others and learns to trust the people around her. Link is wonderful. Reagan is just what Cath needs to push her out of her shell. And throughout it all there's Cath's fangirling experience with Simon Snow which just resonates with me. The scene where they go to the midnight release of the last book had me drowning in memories of my own. The only fourth wall break in this book that probably should've been edited out is when Link mentions Harry Potter once, when the entire book is about Cath fangirling over Simon Snow, which is set up as a substitute for Harry Potter. Why even mention Potter at all?!?!? My favourite quote, because it explains why I love the Internet, is: "There are other people on the Internet. It's awesome. You get all the benefits of 'other people' without the body odour and the eye contact." This book is relatable to the extreme.