Why can't anyone write a good book about NYC??

As already mentioned, I am hitting paranormal burn out at this point, so I might be getting hard to please by now. However, I don't think that is solely responsible for my feelings on this next series. It just plain didn't float. Let's see why:

Title: Blue Bloods
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
My start date: 11/26/10
My finish date: 11/28/10
Book count: 77

On a completely unrelated note, for those of you still paying attention, my original goal this year was to hit 100 books, without counting the novels and works I have to read for my lit classes at the university. However, if I were to count those required readings, this book would be book 99, which means that, technically, I am one book away (not even, since I am actually in the process of reading the next book at the moment) from hitting 100 books this year. And when you remember that those required readings included such hefty titles as Richardson's Clarissa... that is a heck of a lot of page turning done already in 2010.

Back to the task at hand. I really didn't like this book. Remember what I said in the last blog about believability in paranormal fiction? Obviously the paranormal stuff does not need to be necessarily realistic, however the surrounding story should be sufficiently believable. In the case of this book, either she completely missed the mark here, or NYC is a worse off place than I ever want to think about.

First of all, the main characters are as young as 15. That is on the young side, even for strong YA fiction, in which the characters generally range from 16-18. Further, what these tender little 15 year olds are doing was just too much for me. I am not so naive as to think that teens, even that young of teens, drink, smoke and follow their hormones. But usually they try to be a little discreet about it. This book has little 15 year olds partying every night in dance clubs, in which they would walk unconcerned up to the bar and order drinks and then stand out on the balcony smoking. Ok, fine, fake IDs, but then when you get to the scenes in which the school dance has a smoking area?? What?? I know NYC is its own universe, but last I checked, schools being non-smoking areas is pretty well a national thing.

Moving beyond that, the characters weren't likeable. Nor again were they very realistic. This series combines both the vampire angle and the fallen angel angle, indicating that vampires are in fact just fallen angels. Different, but hey, let's roll with it. However, the teens react unrealistically well to the news that they will shortly begin transitioning and want to start drinking blood. In fact, none of the startling revelations about various plot twists seem to illicit much in the way of real emotion from these characters, not even the mandate to two twins that they are romantically destined. I don't know how many teens de la Cruz has been around, but I know that if I told any of my former high school students that they were destined to hook up with their brother or sister, I would meet a little more resistance...

Conclusion: utter flop. But I must be wrong, because apparently this series too has been snatched up for big screen rights. Are they starting to get desperate??
Grade: D, maybe C-
Would adults enjoy this book? I hope responsible adults would be horrified by this book.

Ugh, fighting the burn out... One, perhaps two final books in the genre remain, both have more promise than the above.

Keep reading!
Sarah