Strangled by Simile

 

Southern transplant Emma Lovett and her best friend, Leslie Parker, can hardly believe it’s Emma’s third year at Thomas Jefferson High School. In addition to an amazing year with Emma’s boyfriend, Hunter Wells, and Leslie’s brand-new love interest, they’ve gotten all the way through Homecoming with no one dying.

Oops!

At the end of October, Emma discovers the strangled body of Charlie Foreman, one of Leslie’s favorite nemeses. But the first clue implicates Leslie in the crime. To make things worse, Emma’s feeling a little oogy. She’s tired and dizzy and something’s wrong with her eyes.

All Emma and Leslie are trying to do is find new methods for teaching the youth of America, hopefully using lessons from the Great Bard, their hero, William Shakespeare.

But someone has a different idea: more schooling in murder.

Poison by Punctuation

 

High school teacher Emma Lovett is finally recovering from her first year of teaching when she discovers another dead body. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this time, someone has killed a student, Kisten Hollis.

Emma and her best friend, Leslie, are desperate to solve this murder. But suspects abound. The perpetrator could be a teacher, an administrator, a member of Kisten’s zealous church community, or even another student.

Emma must juggle her teaching responsibilities, her new romance with handsome Hunter Wells, and interest from a hunky second suitor, all while searching for evidence to bring a killer to justice before someone else dies.

VABT ~ Tour ~ Into You

Title ~ Into You

Author ~ Riley J. Ford

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Publisher ~ Riley J. Ford

Published ~ 2 July 2012

Genre ~ YA/Paranormal/Romance

Pages ~ 253

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My Rating ~ 4 bites and a nibble out of 5

Winter Reynolds has spent all summer screwing up the courage to leave her phone number with the cute guy at the mall. Now, they are at the movies and he comes in for a kiss and it’s everything she dreamed about until…he says she needs a breath mint. Only his lips are on hers and they haven’t moved. What? Winter’s life is about to be turned upside down by a super power that sounds at first like it might be pretty cool, but turns out to so not be.

When I read the blurb for this I thought it sounded pretty interesting even though I’m not a huge fan of YA. Teenagers do such dumb stuff and can be so self absorbed a lot of time, so I tend to avoid YA. Not always, but usually. I’m so glad I picked this one up. The writing is wonderful and Winter is a pretty interesting kid. Her best friend Miranda, on the other hand, is a piece of spoiled work, but deep down she’s got a good heart. There’s the typical teen angst in this story with crushes, romance, high school shenanigans and bullies, but Winter also has to deal with a murdered girl who was becoming her friend.

Miranda convinces Winter she needs to use her super power of hearing people’s thoughts when her lips touch theirs to find out who killed Annika. A budding romance with Jason makes it difficult for Winter to go around kissing people trying to find out who on the track team murdered poor Annika especially since she told Jason she wants to take it slow. In other words, she doesn’t want to kiss him and get his life story downloaded the second her lips touch his. She wants to get to know him the right way.

Some of the Homecoming Dance scene was a bit off and took too long to get through, but for the most part this story kept me enthralled. It was paranormal and romance mixed with a mystery and it was a good one. The kissing super power though, I’m not sure I’d want that one though it would come in handy for filtering out creeps.