Another Triple Threat book review

Who knows why I keep posting these book reviews, since it seems hardly anyone reads them now except for me. Because I'm too lazy to write a separate post for each book review, I'm putting them all into one post. I liked reading each of them very much in their own right. Here's what I thought after reading them:

1~ Daniel X: Game Over, by James Patterson
This is book 4 in the Daniel X series. All the way back in April (whoa, does time fly or what?!), I read the first 3 books plus the graphic novel and liked them all well enough (see the review here). Game Over was a pretty good continuation of the series, and does quite well on it's own, I think. I mean, if I had forgotten any of the characters and adventures from the previous books (which I didn't), this does a good job of reminding me and bringing me up to speed.

Basically, the new mission of our titular hero, Daniel, is to take down these 2 aliens who are trying to destroy Earth by brainwashing our video game addicted youth into becoming violent and wiping out the human species. The story takes place in Japan, which in itself is quite awesome, and the evil duo disguise themselves as Japanese video game tycoons. Things are kept interesting when Daniel makes friends with the aliens' son, who doesn't seem to have inherited his parents' vicious ways.

A fast and satisfying read. What do you expect? It's James Patterson. ^_^

2~ Anatomy of a Boyfriend, by Daria Snadowski
Now this was an amazing romance novel, a refreshingly simple girl meets boy story that felt... real. Think Twilght, only there are no vampires and werewolves, and the heroine is a more likable, relatable and strong character. Yes, she has her faults, but she doesn't act stupid. The guy is really sweet, too. When you get to the bottom of it, it's a pure example of first love and how it (unfortunately) crumbles.

Really, in a nutshell, the story goes like this (sorry for the spoilers!):

• Girl embarrasses herself in front of Boy


• Girl and Boy hang out at a couple of parties


• Girl finds herself thinking about Boy all the time


• Girl and Boy kiss


• Girl and Boy officially become a couple (dating and making out)


• Girl goes to separate college than Boy and tries to keep a long distance relationship


• Boy breaks up with Girl, because it's not working, and Girl takes it badly (VERY badly. It was actually kind of scary how she lost her temper like she did)


• Girl moves on

For those hopeless romantics, like myself, this is a great read that I highly recommend.

3~ Boyfriends with Girlfriends, by Alex Sanchez
This book was extremely interesting to get into. I was browsing the shelves in my library and happened to come across this author, Alex Sanchez, who seems to have written a lot of stories about gay teenagers and their own romances. After reading this book, I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy the rest of Sanchez's works. This has a much more complicated story than Anatomy of a Boyfriend, which made for a half slighlty confusing, half incredibly intriguing read.

See, there are two pairs of friends, and all four of them gets a little of the story told from their point of view. There's the gay guy and his friend the straight girl, and then there's the bi-sexual guy and his friend the lesbian girl. Gay and Bi try to become a couple, though Gay finds it hard to accept that Bi really is bi, since he can't relate. Bi only recently broke up with his girlfriend, and he hasn't tried having a real relationship with a guy yet. Meanwhile, Straight girl and Lesbian become really good friends. Lesbian develops a crush on Straight girl, but she already has a boyfriend, so she's off-limits. However, Straight girl is questioning her relationship with her boyfriend and keeps thinking about Lesbian. She even dreams about kissing her! So maybe she's bi too?

I loved reading this book, because I got to read about interesting bisexual characters, in addition to gay and lesbian. I don't believe I've encountered a lot of bi characters in books or movies, so it was really educational for me. In the end, you really don't care what sexual orientation the characters are, because they are truly all unique personalities and have their own hopes and dreams besides who they are attracted to. (btw, I'm hoping that my referring to the characters just by their preference and not their names doesn't offend anyone. Their names were that forgettable. It's like my referring to Girl and Boy in Anatomy of a Boyfriend. It's just an easier way to identify the characters.)

I am definitely going to try and read more books like these.

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer

It seems pretty appropriate that the title of the post is "And Another Thing..." This feels a lot like an after-thought, seeing as I started posting book reviews here again with the great promise of regular updates, but then I fell back on the wayside. ~,~ Oh well. I guess I can't really promise you guys anything.

But anyway, here's a really great book that I read recently!

I bought "And Another Thing..." on one of the last days our Borders store was still open (R.I.P. Borders !,!). I've read and thoroughly enjoyed the other Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or H2G2) books by Douglas Adams in the past. This series has a few zany characters, wacky story elements, and very witty ideas. This 6th book in a trilogy is no different. (*Double-take* O,o Yes, that's what it's referred to as, the 6th book in a trilogy. LOL)

I don't know how Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series (I like those books okay), got the opportunity to write this sequel, but I figured since it was an author I knew, it wouldn't be that bad a read.

Turns out he was pretty faithful to the H2G2 series while putting his own hilarious spin on it. ^_^ A lot of the old characters come back, like Arthur Dent, Trillian, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Prefect, and the Vogons, and there are lots of funny new characters too. (I was kind of sad though that the main character, Arthur Dent, didn't seem to have a lot to do in the story. He didn't have any major character development or anything. He was just... there. He was simply along from the ride, while all the other characters got to have their extremely interesting and unusual adventures.)

Some of the jokes in this book are really funny. You get put in a very silly state of mind when you read something like this, with every turn of the page leaving you thinking, "huh? oh, lol!" There's a lot of convenient and humorous world-building, and the whole story is actually pretty well-written. It felt like an H2G2 book, so I was happy. It wasn't the best, but it was decent.

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Oh, and another thing... lol. I've wanted to post this combo review for a long time now, but just couldn't get around to it. So here you go.

The Daniel X series, by one of my new favorite authors, the awesome James Patterson. ^,^ Now having said that, I wasn't absolutely crazy about this series... but I've got to hand it to JP. He sure knows how to keep you turning those pages. (It must be those dang short chapters and cliff-hangers. =P)

Anyway, the story follows a teenage boy named Daniel (who is secretly an alien) whose destiny is to be an Alien Hunter and protect Earth from bad guys. It kind of reminded me of Men in Black in that respect.

So how does Daniel fight off the alien villains? Well, this kid has one of the coolest and actually most imaginative super-powers I've ever read about: He can create. He can make just about anything he can imagine. From thin air. Just with the power of his mind. He can even make whole people, with full personalities! Oh yeah, and he has other super-powers too, like shape-shifting ability, genius intellect and mind-reading.

While the story and the story-world was pretty interesting, the thing that put me off most about the books is what an overly perfect character Daniel is. I mean, since he can create anything, things come really easy for him. It's almost impossible for bad guys to trick him. Yeah, he does have a couple weaknesses, like getting distracted by girls (hey, he's a teenager. What're you gonna do?) and being a bit cocky. But for the most part, he's a pretty flawless protagonist. I don't know about you, but personally, I prefer my protagonist with a couple flaws in him/her. Also, the books seem to have a couple of preachy messages, like "don't litter", and "read a book, it's better than TV". I don't know. Kinda weird.

Reading the graphic novel of the first book was pretty cool though. It was quite accurate and true to the story. I actually think I liked it a lot better than the book, because I could see what the characters were doing, and what the aliens looked like. Also, I love reading graphic novels because they are such a breeze. ^_^

If you're interested, the 4th book in this series, "Game Over", will be coming out this September. I think I'll give it a try, when I can get my hands on it.

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Oh, and ANOTHER thing! (I promise, this is the last other thing I'll mention. Then you'll finish this review. ^,~) I've also recently read the first 3 Maximum Ride graphic novels, based on the series also by James Patterson, and I gotta say, they are pretty awesome! ^_^

Having read "When the Wind Blows" and "The Lake House", I was kind of familiar with the flying children characters. In this series however, most of them were given different names. Except for the main character, Max, naturally. Also, unlike WtWB and TLH, these kids with wings are completely the main focus, instead of partially.

I'm still waiting for the actual first Maximum Ride book, "The Angel Experiment", to come in for me from the library. I bet it'll be worth the wait though. ^,~

Also, did you know that the 4th graphic novel was released just today? What a coincidence, huh?

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And another thing... no, I'm just kidding. I had you going for a second, though, didn't I? lol. ^_~