60-Page Reviews: Ditched: A Love Story by Robin Mellom

What can I say? I think the title says loud and clear that this book sucks. I actually read significantly more than sixty pages, but I was just trying to read the whole thing so that I might make fun of it more easily. But alas, my life is time-crunched, both in and out of book club. Thus I found it prudent to stop this bloody awful novel and promptly did so.

While I may not be an expert on determining prose quality (I know, I know), the writing here felt very loose and awkward. Certainly not eloquent like Mary Shelley or, say, Jenny Hubbard. The story was dull enough (just an air-headed girl fussing about boys and kisses), but what drove me bleedin' bonky was the narrator, Justina Griffith. She just struck me as a tease, kissing boys and then running off to kiss other boys. At one point someone says Justina seems to consider kissing some kind of chore and she replies (paraphrased), "No, more of a sport." Plus the humor relied heavily on randomness - not the good kind one finds in the works of Lewis Carroll or Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett - just oddness. Random humor, in my opinion, has to be carefully executed or else we have an effect akin to that of a slasher movie claiming to be horror.

I tried not to judge this book by its cover and subject, but garsh, does it suck! Neeext!

Final grade: F

60 Page Review: What Boys Really Want by Pete Hautman

At the end of the 2012 Melinda Awards, there was a "galley grab," in which we teens all fell upon the past year's unpublished proofs like piranhas on a bleeding cow. The cow somehow fell into the river. Anyway, after the aforementioned grab, the cart of books for 2012 was opened to us and this was the one thing I took at the time. To quote myself, "It [looked] like a great book...to throw off the list [of potential winners]." We tend to weed things out rather quickly; only the best of books (in a majority's opinion) make it through to the very end. And this had a ridiculous title, so I grabbed it with the intention of landing it in the Chair of Shame.

The writing was below average but not awful. It's mostly the sexism, for which the term "blatant" would be an understatement. I mean, just look at the title! Not all boys want the same thing, nor do all girls, nor does any other gender. It was chock-full of "That's a girl thing" and "Only a guy would do that" and such. Mind you, this isn't a super-bomb like Vampire Crush, but Hautman certainly isn't quite a Jo Rowling, a Suzanne Collins, or a Holly Black. He's no John Green, no David Levithan, no Jenny Hubbard. What I'm saying is that there are so many superb writers out there, and so many more mediocre ones, that I generally read only the best of things. I also do 60 Page Reviews, but - at least for the moment - I read precisely sixty of the pages before putting things down.

And trust me, I'm pretty damn good at judging books by their covers. Of course, there's a process of getting into a non-60-Page-Review book:

• Look at the cover and title, or spine if shelved
• Look at the summary
• Read the first page or flip to a random page and determine the writing quality
• Make a judgment: to read or not to read?

This book struck me as slightly below average and not worth a good deal of my time. I recently secured its return to the Printz cart and signed it back in for some other poor, brave soul to read.

Final grade: D

60 Page Review: Vampire Crush by A.M. Robinson

Dear oh dear.... What can I say? The title and cover pretty much review the book's content on their own, do they not? No. Well, not all of it. I found the writing to be very sloppy and at times awkward, as well as the narration. I don't have the book on me now, but I remember something like: "I poked at the grapes on my plate with my fork. They looked like little grenades, and I wondered if they might explode. They passed the test."

What? Even when not considering the total randomness of this thought (leave out unimportant words!), it doesn't make logical sense, either: grenades are not mines! They don't just explode when touched! They have pins!!

Another thing was the lack of subtlety. The vampire's name was not Edward Cullen, or even something cool like Richard Sklenar or Kolo (the latter two being of my creation; I write the occasional vampire tale too, just not lame type of which we see so much today). No, no, his name was Vlad. FREAKING. VLAD!!!! Are you gods-be-damned kidding me?? And this got published! What's scary is that the author works in New York City - in publishing. Gulp.

And while Stephenie Meyer, the infamous author of the Twilight series (often referred to as a "saga") did not invent the concept of vampire romance (not even sure who did, if not Bram Stoker - but his was not nearly as stupid; in fact, Dracula has become a favorite of mine), this book rips off Meyer's work in numerous ways, what with the strange family moving in and the Hot Guy ignoring her and sitting with her in class and...you get the idea. This book, or at least the sixty pages I forced myself to read in order to get it off the list at my book club, is unoriginal, poorly written, and ultimately a sheer pain to read. I think I'll read something by Stephen King now, or maybe Mary Shelley's Valperga when I can find a copy. And I do hope Jenny Hubbard writes another book. I intend to be done with Robinson, but who knows? - I might have to do this again. Wish me luck.

Final grade: F

A better review here.

Au revoir!

- Lewis