Amanda Marrone

Slayed was a fun, cutesy type of pre-teen novel centering around the ancestor of the Van Helsings.

Daphne Van Helsing is not your typical teen - she is a vampire slayer! If you couldn't tell by the title. This book centers around her family and the trouble they get into being vampire slayers. It's very cute, and the plot is fun, but it's not made for the older YA audience. This one seems more appropriate for the pre-teen audience - it's kind of teeny bopper cute, with lots of little antics that happen more so in the Percy Jackson-esque young audience (not to say that older YA don't read that to, but it wasn't directed towards the more mature YA audience).

Overall, I really enjoyed it! It was a cute novel! I would definitely like to read more by Amanda Marrone!

There is definitely some parts of it that the mature YA audience won't like - protective parents letting their daughter fight deadly creatures? They must keep in mind the pre-teen audience would identify with that - protective parents but wanting to go out on their own and be "adults".

Three out of five stars! Definitely cute!… (mehr)

Jules is just living the witchy life. She's just a normal teenager with a great group of friends and a bit of style -- but by night, she's killing werewolves, vampires and ghosts with her kick-ass powers, albeit in the oh-so-stylin' threads of a cloak. But as she and her friends approach their 18th birthdays, they start to discover something seriously strange is afoot.

I dunno. I enjoyed this -- it was an easy read, though definitely aimed at the younger of the YA crowd, and there's a mean-girls theme going on that I tend to not be very comfortable with in YA fiction. They do team up and get it together as a group by the end, but it's like nobody else really exists for these girls outside of their circle. And it felt like the end compromised the principles Jules was fighting for all the way through the book. Altogether, glad I got this off my to-read bookcase, but something I could have skipped.… (mehr)