Rosie Reading Update: Blue Bloods

Our Rosie Contest has officially begun, everyone, so get over to the YA shelves and start reading!

Right now, I'm working my way through Blue Bloods, by Melissa De La Cruz, and wondering how she can get away with making my relatives (or ancestors, I guess) into vampires.


Yes, everyone, William White, or "Jack Force" (in the novel) is my many times great grandfather. I have the paperwork to prove it. From our "family historian" on the White side. So if he was a Blue Blood...I wonder what that makes me?

I am having trouble with the vampire family tree thing. It makes the whole book seem a little less real. I think you have to buy into the whole mythology of the historical part of the novel in order to get caught up in the story, and it is not so much happening for me.

It was before they dropped William White's name, though! I was really liking it until then.

Although I want to insist upon you all understanding something: liking a novel has very little to do with whether a novel is good. A great novel might drive me insane, disgust me, bore me, or otherwise annoy me. But that's just fine.

However, I am not offering you an unbiased opinion. I am trying to tell you what I liked or hated about a certain book, and whether I think it is good for all of you to read for fun.

So I am going to keep up my complaints...like this one:

This book has one other big thing that bugs me. Some contemporary authors have this thing where they think it's okay not to describe a character's clothes at all, they just say "Chanel" or "Carolina Herrera" or even "purple monkey fur" (gross--plus, fur is murder) and I am like: what the heck?

Firstly--no one who doesn't have a subscription to Rich People Monthly knows exactly what that particular Chanel design looks like, off the top of their head. The author is a fashion writer--she gets it--but us Gap people, or even American Eagle or Abercrombie and Fitch people...not really on the same page.

So I sit back and say: you have just written a full paragraph about this character's appearance, and half or more of your intended audience has no idea what your character looks like and can't picture them at all.

So you, as an author, have written a paragraph about nothing. At least to those readers...and to me, you can disagree with me if you want...that is bad writing.

I am caught up in the story, except for those things. So I like this book, except for those things. Am I making sense?

Let me rephrase: I think, if you like vampires, like mean rich girl books like A-List and Gossip Girl, and have not taken creative writing or literature classes, you will LOVE this book. Those of us who do not fall into those catagories will find some parts of it grating, but might still like it.

I guess I kind of like it. Okay. I like it. But I don't think I'll read the rest of the series...Fine. I might.