
HIGH SCHOOL BITES by Liza Conrad Category: Paranormal Age Recommendation: Grades 9+ Release Date: 1/3/06 Publisher: NAL Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius" Rating: 5 Stars Lucy Hellenberg lives a somewhat a-typical high school life. Her sixteenth birthday is approaching, but she's not too concerned with it. What bothers her is her father's inability to leave their house, a place that bears a strong resemblance to the one the Munsters of television fame lived in. She worries about whether or not Vic, her sometime- boyfriend, will ask her to the Homecoming Dance. She wonders if she'll ever survive algebra with a teacher like Mrs. Ruthen, otherwise known around Pacific Cedar High as Mrs. Ruthless. To top it all off, her English teacher, Mr. Dobbs, has stared a unit on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Which might have been only mildly interesting (hey, it sure beat Beowulf or Shakespeare!) except for the very, very, very weird coincidences between Dracula and Lucy's own life. Like the fact that two of the main characters of the book are Lucy and Mina, and that Lucy's best friend just so happens to be named Mina. Like the fact that Henry Irving, an actor managed my Stoker back in the late 1800's, shares the same last name as Lucy's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Vic. Like that fact that, on her sixteenth birthday, Lucy's father presents her a journal passed down through her mother's family that lets her in on the little secret that Lucy is now destined to fight Dracula, the most powerful vampire of all. Of course Lucy assumes her dad has went off the deep end, until she starts reading the journal and reads about her lineage. Suddenly, she can see vampires--real, live, blood-sucking vampires--everywhere she goes. And she knows it's up to her--along with the help of Mina, Mr. Dobbs, her father, her other best friend Mark, a cat named Professor V., a godfather who makes garlic perfume, and a boy named Christopher with a pet wolf named Kayla--to stop Dracula before he kills them all. HIGH SCHOOL BITES is a great book! Full of action-adventure, interesting vampire trivia, and main characters that will have you rooting for them, I definitely hope there's another book in THE LUCY CHRONICLES! |