Insatiable- Meg Cabot

Meena Harper is sick of hearing about vampires (I think everyone in the world is sick of hearing about vampires), but this doesn't stop her bosses from forcing her to work on a project that incorporates the supernatural beings into her television show. However, Meena has a supernatural talent herself that seems to always get her into trouble: Meena can see when someone is going to die. So when she meets Lucien Antonescu, she can't understand why she can't see his demise--maybe because he's already dead. Meena and Lucien fall in love, a dangerous action seeing that he is being hunted by holy knights from the Vatican. Soon it will be up to Meena to decide where her loyalties lie and if love is enough to make her choose a new fate.

Overall Merit: I was actually so excited when I thought I found a book that was going to go against the stereotypes of a vampire romance novel, even the trailer suggested that this was the case. However, while it started off with the heroine renouncing the whole vampire love story nonsense, she ended up falling right into the hum drum cliche that Twilight started. I was desperately hoping for something a bit more snarky and satirical. Meena had the potential to turn this into a satirical biting novel, just by the nature of her character, but she was too busy swooning over Lucien and his "hotness" to channel that snark power. Also, making a vampire turn into a dragon does not count as original. It counts as weird and unnecessary, especially when it seems like it's being used as an excuse for a horrible metaphor. Score- 6

Check out the trailer:

Characters: I liked Meena, I really did. Or at least I thought I did. I thought she was going to do something epic with her death discerning powers, but she didn't. This element seemed extraneous and I wondered why Cabot even bothered putting it into the story. Sure, it gave Meena something to morally struggle with, but the moral struggle shouldn't be over something that takes away from the story. There was definitely humor brought mostly by Alaric Wulf (my favorite character in the novel). I mean he was pretty hilarious: a socially awkward, comic book collecting vampire hunter--doesn't get much better than that. Alaric was the saving grace of this book because he actually made me laugh. However, I had a real *bang head on desk* moment when he fell in love with Meena. I love geeky guys, but when they fall in love with the wrong person it upsets me. Lucien was a cliched vampire prince who could read minds. Cough Edward Cullen Cough. Do I need to elaborate? Score- 8 (because I loved Alaric)

Blush Factor: Yes, there is sex. This is a vampire romance novel, not written by a Mormon, of course there's casual sex. Keep young adolescents away from this book because the smut is pretty blatant. Nothing new happened here, you knew from page 20 that Meena and Lucien were going to get it on, and get it on they did--after one date. Score- 4

Structure: If you couldn't tell, this was mainly third person from Meena's perspective, with glimpses of Lucien and Alaric sprinkled throughout. Nothing new happened here, the technical writing was effective and clean. Score-8

Plot: Cliche. If I had to say it in one word it would be cliche. It was advertised as a parody or a satire, but what I got was a standard love triangle vampire story. This book was pretty much what Twilight would have been if Bella weren't such a block of tofu. The supporting characters saved it a little bit as some of their antics were mildly amusing, but overall this book made me very sad about the future of fantasy. Score-5

In summation: If you want the perfect example of a lovable and epic geek then read this book or at least skim the parts with Alaric.

Vervain says: "Meena's visions of the future aren't definite, she has the capacity to change them. However, this doesn't make the power any more useful as a plot device."

The Infernals- John Connolly

I'm going to be perfectly honest--or at least as honest as an Unseelie can be--this book made me laugh. For all it's faults I could not bring myself to dislike the work. While this is a sequel to The Gates (which I highly suggest reading first), I'll give you a brief overview of the events. In the last book, The Great Malevolence gained power and tried to take over Earth, using his agent Mrs. Abernathy (or rather, a powerful demon using the form of a woman who in life was Mrs. Abernathy). The Great Malevolence was defeated by a young boy named Samuel, his dog Boswell, and Nurd (Scourge of the Five Deities). Now we return to the current story where The Great Malevolence is cowering in the bowels of Hell and Mrs. Abernathy is in utter disgrace for her failure to take over Earth. She knows that the only way for her to get back in the good graces of The Great Malevolence is to capture Samuel and drag him down to Hell, a task in which she succeeds (with the second part at least). So through a series of events involving the Hadron Collider, Nurd and a car stolen from Earth, and several evil dwarves who would prefer to be called elves, we traverse the wasteland of Hell.

Overall Merit: The saving grace of this book, if you pardon my irony, was the humor. Connolly did a wonderful job inserting witty quips whenever I felt myself falling into a lull. Unfortunately, the plot isn't anything so novel and neither is the image of Hell, but if anything this book gets a decent score on pure chuckle power. The only true negative is the occasional use of scientific terminology that gives me a headache, but it's easy enough to ignore those footnotes for the most part. Score-8

Characters: No one really stood out as anything super special, although I couldn't help but love Nurd, he was by far my favorite character in the two books. The main protagonist, Samuel, was kind of non-descript. The best I could do for him would be to  call him a slightly nerdy, awkward kid, which I could use to describe basically 80% of characters in young adult fiction. Mrs. Abernathy, the main antagonist was funny too in a quirky sort of way, and she was actually difficult to dislike to the point that I found myself liking her better than Samuel at times. Score-6/7

Blush Factor: N/A

Structure: The story had a linear plot, which switched between three or four main perspectives. It was easy to follow and the only thing that was kind of distracting was the constant usage of footnotes. Score- 7

Plot: Nothing new here. It was a typical protagonist gets put in a sticky situation, gets help along the way, and vanquishes evil. The end. The strong points were really the supporting characters (Nurd) and Mrs. Abernathy. Everything else was rather trite. Score-6