Boogle Outside the Box: Review: Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer

Eighth Grade Bites
Author: Heather Brewer
Publisher: Speak
Publish Date: 03/13/08
Pages: 182
Source: Personal collection

From Amazon:

Vlad has to keep his vampire urges under control while dealing with the pressures of middle school.

Thirteen-year-old Vladimir Tod really hates junior high. Bullies harass him, the principal is dogging him, and the girl he likes prefers his best friend. Oh, and Vlad has a secret: His mother was human, but his father was a vampire. With no idea of the extent of his powers, Vlad struggles daily with his blood cravings and his enlarged fangs. When a substitute teacher begins to question him a little too closely, Vlad worries that his cover is about to be blown. But then he faces a much bigger problem: He's being hunted by a vampire killer.

Vladimir Tod is a vampire thirteen year old. He tries to be normal and fit in with his peers as best he can, but struggles with the challenges constantly. Unfortunately, he isn't always very successful at hiding his true nature. Halloween happens very early in the book and, under pressure from his best friend Henry, levitates to a tree, hangs upside down, and hovers around a group of younger boys. The purpose of this is to have them drop their bags of candy, but it seems to me like a terrible idea when no one is supposed to know you're not a typical human. Yeah, probably no one would believe that he had done those things, but it still seems like a bad idea. There were neighbors. Brings to mind the whole "ABNER ABNER!" situation from Bewitched.

It took me forever to get through all 182 pages of this book because it was dreadfully boring and juvenile. Eventually, after probably close to 150 pages, the plot finally shows up! Oh no! Vlad is being hunted by an evil vampire guy! He's pretty sure it's his new substitute teacher! He probably murdered Vlad's parents too! (Made me say "WHAT?" every time he jumped to the conclusion that nearly everyone killed his parents.) Either way, once we finally hit that point and things started happening that were worth reading about, I somewhat enjoyed the story. I'm not going to say the plot would hit a list of my favorite story lines, but it was interesting enough. It managed to give me a thirty page push to make it to the end.

I promised that the next review would be one less favorable. This one does fit that criteria, but I will say that I do think this book has some appeal...just not for me. I really only bought this book because I found a set of the first four on sale for less than $5 and I had heard pretty good things about the series. I will say that this book could be largely appealing to a younger reader. My freshman year in high school I read a few of the Cirque du Freak books and loved them, and I'm going to say this has close to the same appeal. My favorite part? I LOVE the covers to the books. They are pretty simple, but really pretty.

Would I read this book again? Honestly, probably not. I have the next three books in the series and I'm having serious trouble finding the motivation to crack those open.

Rating: 2 boxes