John Corwin

I was given this book through the We Love YA Books ARR for an honest review, thank you.



Summary :

Sweet Blood of Mine is told in first person through the eyes of Justin Case a nerdy high school student. He’s short, chubby, wears glasses and has a love for Kings and Castles. All this makes him a target for the school’s football team bullies, headed by Nathan. Justin is a hopeless romantic who’s favorite movie is The Princess Bride and who’s saving his virginity for the perfect girl, that girl being Katie, the love of his life.

Justin has been suffering from some blinding headaches for weeks and they usually show up when he becomes angry. One such angry event starts off the book in a fight with Nathan the school bully. In this fight we first see signs of Justin’s extraordinary strength. A slew of events leads to another fight at school and to drunken texting on Facebook. Justin has now become a pariah. Katie hates him and his friends have abandoned him. The only people who want to be his friends are the Goth kids consisting of Crye aka Elyssa, Ash and Nyte. Finding a new group of friends, Justin also decides to change his life; he gets a new haircut, starts going to the gym and buys new clothes. It’s after his first session at the gym on the way back to his car that he meets Stacy, or rather Stacy finds him. She has a very strange effect on him and he runs for his life. From that point on Justin’s abilities continue to grow and he’s sure it’s Stacy’s fault, or is it?

Things aren’t going so well at home and Justin is left to figure out all these strange changes by himself. His mother is gone and his father keeps vanishing so Justin has no idea what to do with his newfound powers. Stacy finds it amusing that Justin has no idea what’s going on, but won’t give him answers. His new powers also get him in trouble with the high school staff and coaches. Justin is also dating Elyssa when suddenly things go wrong between them and he hasn’t a clue why.


Review :

I really enjoyed this book. It was witty, had an interesting cast of human characters and creatures. I didn’t want to put the book down.

Often I can’t get into first person stories because the MC comes across as flat so I don’t get a feel for their personality, but not with Justin. His personality came across loud and clear and he had some of the most hilarious comments and observations. This is probably my most favorite thing about the story is Justin’s humor. Exceedingly sarcastic, Justin’s observations and comments about himself and everyone and everything around him had me laughing out loud throughout the book.It was also refreshing to read a YA book that was told through the eyes of a young man instead of the usual high school girl. I liked that Justin wanted to hold true to his beliefs for the right girl to come along before he had sex, even though because of his abilities and his hormones, Justin was often out of control. Many of the bullies, students and faculty alike, were caricatures rather than realistic. The closer you got to the circle of friends and family around Justin, the more ‘real’ the people became.

Another thing I really liked about the story was all the detail the author put into every little aspect of what went on. The readers aren’t given all the information we’d like in this story because this is only the first book in the series. But the detail to what we are shown is full and rich without having excessive description. The author wove in amusing tidbits around TV series and movies, two being Harry Potter and Star Trek, especially Klingon words.

The story is divided into two parts; the first half of the book is directed to Justin’s trials and tribulations at school and the discovery of his abilities and what he is. The second part of the book deals more with the supernatural and contains most of the action in the story. I think there will be readers who will expect this to be a Buffy type of story where either Buffy or the creatures are hunting for each other and fighting, but it’s not. Probably many people will find the first half slow because it centers around school and Justin’s slow discovery about what he can do. For me I enjoyed reading the first half of the book and didn’t really think it was slow except for the scenes dealing with football, the coaches and the game. The second half is fun and the assemblage of characters that gather around Justin at the end was very interesting, I’d like to see where that goes in future books.

The editing for the book was pretty good and so was the formatting. The only problem with the formatting is that it didn’t seem to have a digital marker that told my NOOK where to start reading again when the NOOK was shut off. I thought it might have been a problem with my NOOK, but I’ve checked some other books and they all find the point where I left off reading. So it seems like some sort of marker is missing in this book to pinpoint the last page read.

In the end I had a lot of fun reading Sweet Blood of Mine. Justin’s character is great, especially with his sarcastic quips about people and situations. I thought the pace of the book was good except around the football scenes. Lastly, the formatting for the digital page marker needs to be fixed. I give the book 4.5 stars and round it up to 5.




… (mais)

Sweet Blood of Mine was a story of epic proportions, didn't expect so much to be happening in one book. Justin Case's mind and body is betraying him, blurred visions, mind numbing migraines and the urge to ravage any female nearby. What the hell is happening to him, it would be great if his usually loving parents who were always there for him were physically or emotionally available to tell him. The two other people who can help aren't giving him straight answers. Should he take an offer of one said person just to get some real information? It's definitely an offer he can refuse but he's desperate for some answers. He just needs one parent to come clean, and soon because time and patience is running out.

Okay, that was just a bit too intense.

Justin was not the popular kid and could not have foreseen the path his teenage life would take in just a matter of, say weeks or maybe months. One day he was the overweight kid with a crush on a girl who wouldn't give him the time of day and suddenly he was the one everyone wants to be friends with. I wondered how would Justin's transformation be handled, would it be sudden, which would obviously be unreal to people or would it be gradual, which would be more accepted. I didn't think it would take that long, I was actually getting impatient. In the end, gradual made more sense and his popularity was rising during his transforming so it made more sense to the story actually.

The story veered in an unexpected direction for me when Justin started to get on the radar of the schools authority figures. Justin's high school is ran by some very shady individuals, where blackmail and threats seem to be the norm by the adults that should be shielding their students from the scums of the earth which it turns out they themselves are. Justin lives in the south where football is the national pastime. The football players are kings of the high school castle where everyone is at fault for their misdeeds. Justin was always getting blamed for anything they did and when he showed an inkling that he might be good at the sport, he was threatened and blackmailed into playing. I really disliked most of the adults at his school, especially the ones who ran it and I didn't see how they were really necessary for the story, except for Justin's strength and stamina playing the game drew unwanted attention to him.

I was glad when Justin realized the difference between infatuation and real love and see that people who can't accept you for the way you look are not your true friends. The were a few highs and lows throughout the story but overall it was a fascinating journey to follow Justin as he learned who or what he really his. There were a lot of facets to this story, especially ones that weren't entirely supernatural, eventually the story took off in a major way towards the end and came back to being a completely supernatural story. Not bad at all, actually want to read the next book.… (mais)

Rarely does a YA book carry this much weight! Seriously, if it were paperback it could best "Breaking Dawn" any day! Be prepared for a true coming of age tale which potentially involves some fairies, may or may not include vamps, and may answer the question of high school once and for all. Interlaced with magic, mogies and mystery, there's enough comedy to keep you laughing, enough true love to keep you hoping and enough Prince's Bride references to make this one legitimately awesome book.
If you don't read this you're missing out!
As for me, I'm gearing up to dive back into the sequel, "just-in-case" I forget how super this saga is.… (mais)