(Image from Barnes & Noble)

(Note:  Although this review will not contain spoilers for Showoff, it may inadvertently reveal plot surprises from earlier books in the Swindle series.  As always, I recommend reading books in a series in order.)

Hanging out with 12-year-old Griffin Bing, a.k.a. The Man With the Plan, can be dangerous.  Just ask his best friend, Ben Slovak.  He's already been roped into enough of Griffin's crazy schemes—he doesn't want to be involved in even one more.  So, when Savannah Drysdale's ferocious Doberman goes crazy at a dog show, leading to the injury of a prize-winning Beagle and the subsequent incarceration of the Doberman, Ben begs Griffin to just leave it alone.  The boys are both terrified of Luthor, but they can't stand to see Savannah so hurt by the loss of her beloved pet.  Besides, there's something fishy about the whole thing.  Luthor's not exactly the most docile pooch in the world, but why would he go bezerk all the sudden?  It doesn't add up.

When Griffin makes one of his famous plans, this time to break Luthor out of the pound, he and Ben are unwittingly thrown into a whirlwind adventure involving a monster dog and the fussy, but cutthroat world of competitive dog showing.  The misbehaving Doberman clearly isn't Best of Show material and yet, the only way to save Savannah's slobbering dog is to turn him into a model citizen.  In the meantime, the boys can poke around all of New York City's most prestigious dog shows for clues as to who was really responsible for Luthor's strange behavior toward the Beagle.  The boys will, of course, get more than they bargained for—the Man With the Plan wouldn't have it any other way.

Gordon Korman books are always hit and miss for me.  My kids adore everything he writes, but I find some of his stuff (like Swindle) to be too underdeveloped, too far-fetched, to be truly appealing.  Don't get me wrong—I love children's books, I just want them to be well-written, you know?  At any rate, I wasn't super excited when the librarian at my kids' school asked me to read Showoff, the fourth book in the Swindle series.  Being the dutiful volunteer that I am, I did it anyway.  And was pleasantly surprised.  Showoff turned out to be a fun, zany mystery that kept me laughing and turning pages.  It's not like my favorite children's book of all time, but I actually enjoyed this one much more than I thought I would.  My kids, of course, think it's Newbery material; I wouldn't go that far.  Still it's a fun one.   

(Readalikes:  Swindle and the rest of the books in the Swindle series by Gordon Korman)

Grade:  B

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  PG

To the FTC, with love:  I borrowed Showoff from the library at my children's elementary school and read it as part of my volunteer work with the school's Quest reading program.  

(Image from Amazon)

If you're a Dan Wells fan—and even if you're not—you should be getting your hands on his hilarious novella, A Night of Blacker Darkness.  'Course, that's a lot easier said than done right now.  As far as I can tell, the only way you can get the book (until May, anyway, when the ebook will again be available) is to buy it at as an audiobook at Audible.com.  Luckily for me, Whitney Academy members have access to a PDF version, which I happily downloaded and read on my Kindle Fire.  It didn't take long for the story to make me laugh out loud. In fact, I decided pretty early on that A Night of Blacker Darkness is my favorite of Wells' books.  It's that delightful.  

I like the plot summary I found on Wells' website, so I'm just going to go ahead and use it:

It's 1817.  Wrongly imprisoned, Frederick Whithers is desperate to commit the crime he's already being punished for: defrauding the bank out of a vast inheritance.  He fakes his death to escape, but when he's seen climbing out of a coffin everyone assumes he's a vampire; when he shows none of the traditional vampire weaknesses, they assume he must be the Great One, the most powerful vampire in the history of the world.

Half horror and half farce, Frederick's tale is an ever-growing avalanche of bankers, constables, graverobbers, poets, ghouls, morticians, vampires, vampire hunters, not to mention some very unfortunate rabbits.  With a string of allies even more unlikely than his enemies, can Frederick stay alive long enough to claim his (well, somebody's) money?  And if he can't, which of his innumerable enemies will get to him first?

Lara Reid thinks her family is just like every other one in the U.K.  Her father always tells her she's special, she just assumes that's the reason people gawk.  Turns out, that's not it at all.  According to the playground taunts, Lara's family doesn't "match" and everyone knows families are supposed to match.  Anyone with functioning eyes can see the one thing Lara's never really understood—a Caucasian couple like Barry and Pat Reid could never have produced a child with Lara's brown skin and bushy, black hair.  Realizing the truth in her classmates' insinuations, Lara comes to the only logical conclusion: she's an alien.

Anyone who knows about my beautiful, bi-racial daughter, adopted a few years ago from the bayous of Louisiana, will understand why I found Being Lara by Lola Jaye such a compelling novel.  I would have read the book based on the cover alone (when my little girl saw the model on the front, she exclaimed, "It's me, Mommy!"), but the plot line also intrigued me.  With themes of transracial adoption, racial/cultural identity, family, and other issues I ponder every day, I knew this story would speak straight to my heart.  And it did.  I sympathized with Lara, in all her confusion and vulnerability, as well as with her two mothers, both of whom narrate some sections of the story.  While I don't necessarily agree with how the Reids handled the whole adoption thing, I recognized all their feelings of anxiety, doubt, guilt and fear, as I've experienced them all since the day I decided to become an adoptive mother.  As for the actual story, it's fast-paced, well-told, realistic (except, perhaps, for the rather tidy end) and heartwarming without being sappy.  I'm not sure I buy the idea that Lara didn't notice her family was different until age 8 (after all, my 3-year-old will look at a picture of Disney princesses and identify herself as Tiana and me as Belle), but that's a small matter, really.  From the lovely cover (I need the number of the hairstylist responsible for that gorgeous hair!) to the important (and very relevant to me) themes to the globetrotting storyline (just try not to be affected by Jaye's descriptions of Nigeria, a place she once lived), I liked Being Lara a whole lot.  It reminded me that families aren't about "matching," they're about love.      

(Readalikes:  Reminds me of No Biking in the House Without A Helmet by Melissa Fay Greene and When the Black Girl Sings by Bil Wright)

Grade:  B-

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  R for language (2 F-bombs, plus milder invectives) and mild sexual innuendo/content

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

(Note:  While this review will not contain spoilers for I Don't Want to Kill You, it may inadvertently reveal plot surprises from the first two books in the trilogy.  As always, I recommend reading books in a series in order.)

I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with the John Cleever series by Dan Wells.  The books are all well-written, compelling and thought-provoking, to be sure, but they're also gory, violent and disturbing.  So, while I find them entertaining, I also find them a little hard to stomach.  The middle book (Mr. Monster) made me feel physically ill, so I was a tad reluctant to pick up I Don't Want to Kill You, the last book in the trilogy.  If it hadn't been nominated for this year's Whitney Awards, I probably would have put off reading it a bit longer, which would have been a shame because it's not nearly as unsettling as its predecessors.  Or maybe it's just me—it's entirely possible that prolonged exposure to the twisted mind of Dan Wells has deadened my frailer sensibilities.  

At any rate, I Don't Want to Kill You begins a couple of months after Mr. Monster ends.  John Wayne Cleever, a 16-year-old sociopath, is waiting patiently for the arrival of a demon named Nobody.  The monster is coming, John knows that; it's just a matter of when she'll show up.  Whenever she makes her arrival, he'll be ready.  He might study serial killers, he might dream of murder, but John's tired of watching people he knows die. It's time for him to take control, to destroy the demon who may already be darkening the streets of his hometown, masquerading as a normal, everyday resident of Clayton, North Dakota.  

John's unusual psychological makeup makes him the perfect demon hunter, but he can't let his darker impulses control him if he wants to have any kind of normal life.  And he does, he really does.  To triumph over Mr. Monster, the devil that lurks inside him, John must focus on the hunt for Nobody.  In order to save the people of Clayton, he has to take a careful, probing look at each and every one of them.  All of them, as he soon discovers, are hiding something, but which one of them conceals a demon?  It will take all of John's wit, all of his strength, all of his talent to find and eliminate Nobody before she takes over the town and everyone in it.  

Like the first two books in the trilogy, I Don't Want to Kill You explores the idea of people choosing their own destinies, in spite of all the things that might be working against them.  This intriguing premise is what elevates the novels above other horror stories.  In addition, John is a character who probably shouldn't be sympathetic, but is, simply because he's trying so hard to overcome his baser instincts.  He's a fascinating hero, one for whom I always find myself rooting, even when he's having homicidal thoughts toward his mother (shudder).  So, while the John Cleever books make me distinctly uncomfortable, I still think they're sort of brilliant.  Just in a gross, disturbing kind of way.      

Grade:  B

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  PG-13 for language (no F-bombs); violence/gore; and sexual innuendo

To the FTC, with love:  Another library fine find