Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Drain Me by M. Beth Bloom


Book:  Drain You
Author:  M. Beth Bloom
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Date:  July 24, 2012
Source:  Publisher via Netgalley
My rating: 2 moons

Every night I'd lie there in bed and look out at the hills behind our house, listening. I knew there'd be consequences.

Actions meant reactions. Sunrises meant sunsets. My fear was too permanent, lasting longer than eyeliner, something I wore every day and didn't wash off.

Quinlan Lacey's life is a red carpet of weird fashions, hip bands, random parties, and chilling by the pool with her on-and-off BFF Libby. There's also her boring job (minimum wage), a crushed-out coworker (way too interested), her summer plans (nada), and her parents (totally clueless). Then one night she meets gorgeous James, and Quinn's whole world turns crazy, Technicolor, 3-D, fireworks, whatever.

But with good comes bad and unfortunately, Quinn's new romance brings with it some majorly evil baggage. Now, to make things right, she has to do a lot of things wrong (breaking and entering, kidnapping, lying, you name it).

There's normal, and then there's paranormal, and neither are Quinlan's cup of Diet Coke. Staying sane, cool, in love, and alive isn't so easy breezy.  (Cover and description from www.goodreads.com)

MY REVIEW

Initial impression
hmmmmmmmmmm..............

Title and Cover
The title is good, especially for a vamp novel and it has the Nirvana tie-in, which was cool.  The cover is so-so.  It’s not great, but it’s not terrible.   The title would make me look at it because I would know it’s a vamp book.

Plot, characters, etc.
At first, I hated this book.  As in, didn’t even think I would bother finishing it.  At the end, I still don’t like Quinn, the main character.  She is the type of kid that grates my last nerve when I have one in my class.  She is pretty much lazy and worthless.  She makes dumb choices and she knows it but doesn’t care.  She is so apathetic that I just wanted to slap some sense into her.  So, reading her voice was extremely irritating to me.

Somewhere along the way, though, she started to grow up a little bit.  For a small while, she was less irritating and more normal and together.  Of course, it didn’t last long.  By the end of the book, she was back to being her stupid, worthless self.

It was the other characters that saved this book for me.  Morgan was such a sweetheart.  I loved him!  While I wanted to strangle Quinn for not seeing what was plainly in front of her face, I was sort of glad too because Morgan deserved better than Quinn.  The same was true with Whit, the brother of Quinn’s vamp bf, James.  Whit was everything that James was not and once again, Quinn was too stupid to see what was so evident.

The plot sort of dragged for a while.  Since I was reading this for a book marathon, I had to make myself keep going.  But it was hard.  Quinn was so stupid to not see all the signs that provided evidence about James and the twins and all the other vamps.  But that was ok, I could forgive her for that.  It was her day to day stupidity that was infuriating.

Once the plot picked up, the book got better.  Actually, once Whit showed up, the book got better.  I was really aggravated with Quinn’s insta-love for James, though.  And she just jumped right in and had sex with him, no problem.  So now she’s a lazy, apathetic slut. Really????  I never did understand why she thought that James was the cat’s meow, but she totally blew off the other 2 boys.  And I’m not saying that having sex makes a girl a slut, because it doesn’t, but if you have seen a guy only 3 times and then the first time he kisses you, it ends with sex and you’re 17 and it happens on a mattress in a closet, then, yeah, probably you are.

I was just so irritated by Quinn through most of this novel.  Then there was the big non-ending ending.  What was that?  The whole thing was just left there, hanging.  Sort of doing nothing, like Quinn.  I don’t know if there’s supposed to be another book or what, but this one doesn’t really wrap up at all.

This book is set in the 90’s, like in the middle of the grunge era.  I loved the 90s, but I’m not really sure why the book was set during that time.  There was no reason, plot-wise for that to happen, so it ended up just being kind of confusing when there was talk of a Discman and no one had cell phones and such.  Maybe the author likes the 90s, but at least make it important to the plot if you are going to use that time setting.

Songs

Drain You by Nirvana



This song is quoted multiple times in the book, so it seemed to make sense to put it here.

Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus



This song reminded me of poor Morgan.  Also, I kind of think that Quinn is a teenage dirtbag.

Lazy Day Afternoon by The Plain White T’s



It’s not the right decade, but this song is Quinn’s theme song.

The final score
My rating for this book is 2 moons.  It was okay.  It wasn’t very long (218 pages), so I didn’t waste too much time on it, but if I had it to do again, I don’t know that I would read it.  There are better vamp books out there.  Even Bella Swan wasn’t this aggravating and Edward Cullen was a much better vampire than James.   But honestly?  I’d ditch the vamps totally and make out with Whit.

Now, this book was not my cup of tea, or cup of blood, as it may be.  However, other people have liked it a lot.  Check out these reviews on goodreads to see what others think of the book.



 

Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper Collins for allowing me to read a review this book.  I received nothing for my honest review, not even a black and white milkshake with Whit.

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