Marked by P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast

This is a hugely popular teen series and I decided to try it out. I'm not really impressed. I asked a co-worker if it gets better and she said it did on book 3. Ughh! I don't know if I want to invest another book before it gets good. I have too many other books I want to read. I thought it was a weird combination of juvenile and teen vulgarity. Everything is told from the perspective of the main character Zoey. At times she has weird moments where she says things like "hee, hee" and tells lame jokes to herself. It's an odd way of narrating because it's all in her head and she acts like she's 10 years old. To balance the lame juvenile behavior, you have Zoey walking in on some girl trying to give a guy a blow job. In other parts of the book, it talks about a girl touching herself during a ritual and someone getting their female parts pierced. Sprinkled throughout the book is a generous amount of "f-bombs". Not to be a prude (these things wouldn't make me batt an eye in an adult novel), but this is a "teen" series. Yet another reason why parents should monitor what their children read. A lot of parents let their kids read above their age level and don't expect teen books to contain this kind of stuff in it. It's becoming more and more common.

This book takes place in a world where vampires exist and people are "marked" to become vampires. When they are marked, they are branded with a tattoo-like marking on their forehead and are given a certain amount of time to go to the House of Night or else they die. The House of Night is a school for training fledgling vampires. After the fledglings are marked, they start to undergo the changes that turn them into adult vampires. There is still a possibility their body will reject the change. The main character in this book is Zoey Redbird. She is marked and for some reason is special from other fledglings. While at the House of Night, she makes enemies with the "popular" girl at school and also has to deal with other minor issues like her human ex-boyfriend becoming obsessed with her.