Book Review- Night School by C. J. Daugherty

Title: Night School

 Author:  C.J. Daugherty

Series:  Night School Series #1

Published:  5 January 2012 by Atom

Length: 451 pages

Warnings: violence, skinny dipping, nearly a violent/romantic (this is hard to describe) encounter, 14+

Source:  Publishers via Atomics

Other info: It is a series !  ( C&P from author, “The first book in the Night School series.
Published January 2012 by Atom”). And this is her debut work.

Summary : Sometimes school is murder. Allie Sheridan's world is falling apart. She hates her school. Her brother has run away from home. And she's just been arrested. Again. This time her parents have finally had enough. They cut her off from her friends and send her away to a boarding school for problem teenagers.
But Cimmeria Academy is no ordinary school. Its rules are strangely archaic. It allows no computers or phones. Its students are an odd mixture of the gifted, the tough and the privileged. And then there's the secretive Night School, whose activities other students are forbidden even to watch. When Allie is attacked one night the incident sets off a chain of events leading to the violent death of a girl at the summer ball. As the school begins to seem like a very dangerous place, Allie must learn who she can trust. And what's really going on at Cimmeria Academy.

Review: After her brother runs away and she’s arrested for the third time, Allie Sheridan is shipped off to Cimmeria Academy for a new chance. But everything is odd...there are no traces of the twenty first century, and the rules... who knows why some of them are in place? And then there’s the students... filthy rich Sylvain, bad (or maybe good) boy Carter, mysterious Jo and her boyfriend Gabe. Throw in a headmistress with plenty of secrets she’s trying to keep, and a dead girl at the ball, and soon Allie realises that trust is not going to be easy here at Cimmeria.

If you can’t call this mystery, I’m not sure what you can call it. Although the first bit was a bit boring, once we got to see a bit more of the school, I was guessing and wanting to keep going throughout. And some of these things don’t even get resolved. The titular Night School, we don’t ever find out exactly what they are and what they’re doing. I don’t think there’s any paranormal elements, but I’m still not sure. 

There’s the standard stock range of boarding-school types, with the bad boy, the rich one, the prefect, the really horrible girl... and they all had their own personalities. Most of them have something to hide, and new things about them all unfold at various parts of the story, adding depth and unpredictability.

The romance in it was actually done well. Kind of. It was good in that it actually moved the plot along, instead of just being a side story that could be removed without affecting the story at all. The romance with Sylvain was rather central to moving along, both for Allie’s development and to a slightly smaller extent, the general plot.

Allie definitely develops a lot. Along with finding things that maybe she should have left alone, she matures and starts understanding that trust is not something that should come easy.

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a great start to a series full of intrigue. I definitely want to read the next book and see how events will unravel.

Links: | Goodreads | Author website | 

Book Review- Fairy Bad Day by Amanda Ashby

Title: Fairy Bad Day

 Author: Amanda Ashby

Series:  N/A

Published:  9 June 2011 by Speak

Length: 336 pages

Source: Giveaway by Lesley @ My Keeper Shelf

Other info: Amanda Ashby’s other books are You Had Me at Halo and Zombie Queen of Newbury High. There are more coming up.

Summary : While most students at Burtonwood Academy get to kill demons and goblins, fifteen-year-old Emma gets to rid the world of little annoying fairies with glittery wings and a hipster fashion sense. She was destined to be a dragon slayer, but cute and charming Curtis stole her spot. Then she sees a giant killer fairy - and it's invisible to everyone but her! If Emma has any chance of stopping this evil fairy, she's going to need help. Unfortunately, the only person who can help is Curtis. And now, not only has he stolen her dragon-slayer spot, but maybe her heart as well! Why does she think it's going to be a fairy bad day

Review: Emma is not having a good day. She expects to be assigned to kill dragons-especially as her mother was also one, before she died. But then her school decides she'd be better off slaying fairies instead. So she's stuck with that. And the person who DID get designated Dragon-slayer is Curtis Green. By Emma's standards he's cute, but she still hates him. And then a giant fairy thing turns up. It's called a darkhel and it plans to open the gates sealing off the majority of evil creatures from Earth. And only Curtis and Emma can see it. And kill it.

The premise sounds fun. Fairy slayers are never seen in young adult books, at least not what I've read. And I love the idea of a school churning out slayers of elementals. It seems fun.

It was a little bit of a shock having it in third person, despite the blurb being written in first. I loved the attitude on the back cover, and I'd have loved to get to know Emma and her personality throughout the book.

That's not to say we didn't get a good idea of her personality from her actions and dialogue. We did, and it showed her as being inventive and not afraid to talk back. But I'd have liked this in first person, as the back hinted at such a great personality.

The supporting characters were very good. Love interest Curtis I don't have much of an opinion on, as half the time we see him and Emma together they're either fighting eachother, fighting creatures, or forced together for schoolwork. Also his big secret I could kind of see coming. I didn't know exactly how it would work out, but his initial explanation for the glasses didn't seem right. Loni is the kind of girl who you can be great friends with,  despite the fact she will constantly get on your nerves with her spouting about horoscopes and being made for eachother and so on. And the fairies...despite hating them to start with, they seemed to become more likeable and they really grew on me.

I'm not sure why, but I never got a good mental image of the darkhel, which made the majority of the important scenes hard to imagine.

The romance was nicely done, following the plot formula before the love triangle: they'd be perfect for eachother, but grudges/initial dislike get in the way. The lack of love triangle is very nice and more my kind of romance.

Overall:  Strength 4  tea to a fairy quick, easy and fun book.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website |

Book Review- Ouran High School Host Club vol 1 by Bisco Hatori

Title: Ouran High School Host Club vol 1

 Author: Bisco Hatori

Series:  Ouran High School Host Club #1

Published:  5 July 2005

Length: 184 pages

Warnings: sexual situations (Viz rating)

Source: Library

Other info: Bisco Hatori has also written Millenium Snow, also published by Viz. OHSHC has been made into an anime and, recently, a live-action television series. The manga is    and spans    volumes.

Summary : One day, Haruhi, a scholarship student at exclusive Ouran High School, breaks an $80,000 vase that belongs to the 'Host Club', a mysterious campus group consisting of six super-rich (and gorgeous) guys. To pay back the damages, she is forced to work for the club, and it's there that she discovers just how wealthy the boys are and how different they are from everybody else.

Review: Haruhi Fujioka is a scholarship student at Ouran High School, a school where money and linage determines how  school life is. One day, she searches for a quiet room to study in. Instead she finds the host club, six boys with nothing to do other than entertain the girls(who pay them). She then accidentally breaks a vase that cost $80,000. She has no way of paying the debt with money, so she ends up working for them as one of the boys-if she gets 100 customers, her debt is paid. She learns exactly how different life is for these rich guys, and the girls that they cater to, and possibly falls slightly in love along the way.

The concept isn’t that amazing, but it’s good enough to get a fairly large fanbase. The plot is interesting somewhat. In the first chapter, we get introductions to the Host Club, who all play up to some romantic stereotype: Tamaki, the leader of the host club, Kyoya, the smartish guy, Hikaru and Kaoru, the twins with an implied, played up, side relationship, Mori, the guy who’s almost silent all the time, and Hunny, the cute one who looks to be five but is one of the oldest of the group. We also get one of the customers, Ayanokoji, who doesn’t really like Haruhi and the fact that he/she is “common”. She tries to sabotage Haruhi’s school life, by doing things like dropping her books into the pond. She is eventually caught and thrown out, and Haruhi’s customer requirement is raised to 1000. Which will take her forever. In the other two chapters, we meet other characters, and things revolve around the events surrounding the host club.

It’s a very easy story to get into-light, not too much going on, nice characters, very funny in times. Tamaki’s character in particular. All of the host club have their own distinct personalities that make them sellable in the book and easy to distinguish for us. The comedy is the strong point here. It does die down at parts for more serious things, but the series is meant to be a comedy one, and it lives up well to this. However, some parts are played up to the point where it’s annoying.

The art is detailed and flowy in typical shojo style with quite a lot of flowers and typical girly motifs. The characters are easy to distinguish, apart from the twins(which, as they are identical, is probably the point). 

Sorry this has more been a detailed summary than a review. Not that much happens, but it’s good in the way that comedies are, in a completely different way to novels.

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a manga series that is very easy to see why it’s taken off, and is recommended to anyone who wants a quick fluffy school-set romance.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | 

Book Review- Vampire Knight vol 1 by Matsuri Hino

Title: Vampire Knight vol. 1

Author: Matsuri Hino

Series: Vampire Knight #1

Published: January 2007 by Viz Media. First published in Japan in 2005 by Hakusensha. First published in magazine Lala in 2004. First published in English in Shojo Beat in 2006.

Length: 200 pages

Warnings: vampires, gore, violence, guns. (my recommendation) “Sexual themes and violence” (Viz rating)

Other info: There are currently 11 volumes out in English the twelfth should be published later in the year. Matsuri Hino has written Captive Hearts and Meri Puri. Vampire Knight is still ongoing.

Summary (blurb):Cross Academy is attended by two groups of students: the Day Class and the Night Class. At twilight, when the students of the Day Class return to their dorm, they cross paths with the Night Class on the way to school. Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the Guardians of the school, protecting the Day Class from the Academy’s dark secret: the Night Class is full of Vampires!
Yuki Cross has no memory of her past prior to the moment she was saved from a vampire attack ten years ago. She was adopted by the headmaster of Cross Academy, and now works alongside Zero to guard the Academy’s secret. Yuki believes that vampires and humans can co-exist peacefully, but her partner has different ideas...

Review: My book 4 of Parajunkee’s Vampire Challenge.

The story begins with a girl who looks about three (but is five) about to be attacked by a vampire. A boy who looks about eight comes along, kills said vampire, is a vampire himself, and walks off.

Cut to present day: Aforementioned girl is revealed to be Yuki Cross. We’re at the Cross Academy, with a day class and a night class. The night class are all extremely beautiful and adored by the Day class. This is because they are all vampires. The Night Class walk to school, and would be attacked by the Day Class if it wasn’t for Yuki, whose job, as school guardian, it is to keep Day and Night Classes separate. Kaname Kuran is revealed to be the boy who looked about eight and is now dorm president. And then Zero Kiryu turns up, who is the other school guardian. The rest of the volume is really an introductory thing, which does have a plot of its own. We learn that Zero is a vampire, we meet a couple of vampires, one of which bites Yuki and ends up with a slap from Kaname, and we meet the headmaster of Cross Academy, whose dream it is that vampires and humans can co-exist. In case you haven’t guessed, this goes badly, which is basically what the whole of this volume revolves around.

The story is good. There’s a lot more going on than I said earlier, but I tried to summarise it all. It’s interesting as everything happens in a fairly quick period of time and is fairly fast paced.

The characters are slightly stereotyped, with the damsel in distress caught in a love triangle between Mr. Perfect and angry young man. The romance is a lot of “who will she go for”, which I suppose is interesting to those who like that sort of thing. Characters other than Yuki, Zero and Kuran don’t really serve much purpose other than as comic relief, in this volume anyway. The art is especially pretty, detailed and realistic.

This isn’t a Twilight clone. I know this because it was published BEFORE Twilight. However, t

here are a lot of similarities (the love triangle, the Mary Sue, and many more) that means people do compare t

hese.

Overall: I give it strength 3 tea because I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t outstanding. It’s a good read for any vampire fan, especially Twilight fans, but to anyone else, it would just be average.