Love Sucks, by Melissa Francis

"AJ Ashe may have gotten rid of her vampire stalker and her evil ex-teacher, but things are hardly back to normal. For one thing, she still has to maintain a strict look-but-don't-touch policy with Ryan, her hot ex-boyfriend-turned-stepbrother. For another, she has to learn to control her vampire superpowers—which means more than a few dates with Lex, mind-reading professional vampire trainer and too-sexy-for-his-own-good bad boy. And as if that's not enough, she happens to be the key to her father's plans to take over the world . . . and he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.
All this and she's still got to plan the prom. Being a teenager is tough, but being a teenage vampire just flat out sucks!"

We have to admit right off the bat, this is the second in a series, and we have not read the first (Bite Me). Our library did not own the first, and we were frankly not keen on ordering yet another vampire book just so we could review this one. So we started reading Love Sucks.

Hmm. Hee hee, good line. Oh, nice zinger. Our favorite teen might like these.

Chuckle. She would love these.

And then we meet Lex...she will love, love, LOVE these! Pause to write out order card and slap a patron request on it. We get it first, though, Favorite Teen can wait.

A little while back, Amanda at A Patchwork of Books alluded to us being slightly sarcastic. We have NO idea what she means, but we did love the main character's constantly snarky comments and her way of using humor to handle stress. When addressing a demon trying to eat her sister, we get 

"D***, you're a big bucket of ugly,"

(there is a bit of mild swearing throughout) or;

The demon bared its fangs and wrapped its meaty fingers around my wrist and pulled me into its chest. "We need to have a serious discussion about your manners and your lack of dental hygiene," I said.

You might think it would be hard for a turtle to identify with a teenage vampire, but we found ourselves nodding and rolling our eyes at parts like:

To my horror, every girl on the committee squeed. (Why do people squee? Seriously.)

AJ is very likeable. There's plenty of action, mixed with romance - the boy you can't have but can't forget, and the boy you don't want to like but can't resist ("a smile so cocky that I was torn between wanting to slap it off his face and wanting to stare at it for hours.") Award-winning literature? Probably not - but your Twilight fans and teen lit readers will eat it up. We give this one a

4 out of 5.