Novel Review: Ninth Key (The Mediator, #2) by Meg Cabot

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Genre: YA Supernatural Romance

Publisher: Avalon (Simon & Schuster)

Release Date: 2001

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Ghosts ruin everything. Especially your love life.

Everything is going great for Suze. Her new life in California is a whirlwind of parties and excellent hair days. Tad Beaumont, the hottest boy in town, has even asked Suze out on her very first date. Suze is so excited that she's willing to ignore her misgivings about Tad... particularly the fact that he's not Jesse, whose ghostly status - not to mention apparent disinterest in her - make him unattainable.

What Suze can't ignore, however, is the ghost of a murdered woman whose death seems directly connected to dark secrets hidden in none other than Tad Beaumont's past.

The Cover:

These covers are very meh to me. They're plain, boring, don't make me want to pick up the book. But they're kind of fitting for the genre, I guess. Definitely could be better, though.

Review:

This series is surprisingly more enjoyable than I thought it would be. If I had read it in middle school, or even high school, I would have eaten it up. I should have read it then.

In this second book, Suze is trying to live normally, trying to fall for a high school boy who pays her attention instead of her ghost roommate. When a ghost keeps waking her up screaming at night, she’s forced to investigate the woman’s death and her relation to her kind-of-boyfriend’s father. It gets messy, but Suze doesn’t let anything deter her, and keeps forcing her way forward, into and out of trouble, while trying to keep her family in the dark about her abilities.

Even though the writing, the exaggeration, is definitely meant more for a middle school/early high school age, this series is surprisingly fun to read, and very fast to get through, in the same way as Mary-Janice Davidson. Suze’s attraction to Jesse is obvious, and I enjoy his protectiveness over her. I like Suze’s interactions with Father Dominic, his strict teachings with her easy-going way of everything. I still think that Suze’s little stepbrother Doc is adorable, and I wanted to see Suze’s talk with him at the end of the book more fully.

Even though this series isn’t really for me at this point, I’m still tempted to pick up the next one.

Teaser Tuesday[183]: Ninth Key (The Mediator, #2) by Meg Cabot

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

------------------------------

Ninth Key (The Mediator, #2) by Meg Cabot

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Avon (Simon & Schuster)

Release Date: 2001

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Powells.

                            

Goodreads Synopsis:

Ghosts ruin everything. Especially your love life.

Everything is going great for Suze. Her new life in California is a whirlwind of parties and excellent hair days. Tad Beaumont, the hottest boy in town, has even asked Suze out on her very first date. Suze is so excited that she's willing to ignore her misgivings about Tad... particularly the fact that he's not Jesse, whose ghostly status - not to mention apparent disinterest in her - make him unattainable.

What Suze can't ignore, however, is the ghost of a murdered woman whose death seems directly connected to dark secrets hidden in none other than Tad Beaumont's past.

Excerpt:

“‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. I really felt bad. I mean, I had disfigured the guy. This incredibly sexy, fabulous-looking guy.” (Paperback, pg. 107)

What are you reading right now?

Novel Review: Shadowland (The Mediator, #1) by Meg Cabot

Genre: YA Paranormal (Light Romance)

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: HarperCollins/Teen

Spoilers?: Minor-ish

Buy it here: Amazon.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Suze is a mediator -- a liaison between the living and the dead. In other words, she sees dead people. And they won't leave her alone until she helps them resolve their unfinished business with the living. But Jesse, the hot ghost haunting her bedroom, doesn't seem to need her help. Which is a relief, because Suze has just moved to sunny California and plans to start fresh, with trips to the mall instead of the cemetery, and surfing instead of spectral visitations.

But the very first day at her new school, Suze realizes it's not that easy. There's a ghost with revenge on her mind ... and Suze happens to be in the way.

Review:

I first started this book a couple of years ago, and got a little over a hundred pages into it, but didn’t like it very much. I decided to finish it recently, though, and felt better about it. In a way, it reminds me a bit of MaryJanice Davidson’s writing, in how fast it goes by, not so much in the jokes. Maybe that’s why it was an easier read for me this time, since I’ve grown to really enjoy Davidson’s books.

Shadowland is about Suze, a girl who is forced to move from New York to California because her mother remarried, and so now she has three step-brothers, and a new ghost roommate. Yea, Suze can see ghosts. She’s not a big fan of them, but she knows how to deal with them; including how to get rid of them. Only, her roommate, Jesse, isn’t going away. And neither is that pesky dead girl at her new school.

At first, Suze annoyed me with how cocky in herself she was, but I think that lessened later on in the book, because it didn’t bother me so much in my second attempt. I like Jesse, who’s a dead cowboy, and seems rather sweet. Right now they have a love-hate relationship going on, which I’m sure will lessen in later books, because they’re growing on each other. There also doesn’t really seem to be a point in it, so I hope it goes away or becomes more natural.

There’s also a scene where she does an exorcism, and she skips out on the details. Since it’s in Suze’s point-of-view, she makes the excuse that she doesn’t want the readers to try it, but to me it sounded like the author just hadn’t done enough research or something. I mean, that could have worked, but it just didn’t for me. The random, exaggerated dynamic in this book just doesn’t seem to work very well, to read very naturally, and I’m not sure why. I’m hoping that it works itself out, gets into a better flow, later in the series.

I really like Doc, also known as David, who is Suze’s youngest step-brother. I think he’s in middle school, and he’s rather and adorable and very sweet. Her other step-brothers seem alright, and I’m hoping to get to know them better in later books.

She meets a second mediator in this book, Father Dom (which is probably short for Dominic or something, but I keep thinking Dominant, as in BSDM type things, which is horrible and should not be related to this book in anyway. Do you think that was purposeful by the author, though, or a total coincidence? Cause I keep wondering…), who works at her school, which is very religious. He seems nice, and will probably be helping her out, teaching her some things about being a mediator, in later books.

At first, I hadn’t planned on reading any more books in this series, or by Cabot, but now I think I might. I do want to see what happens between Suze and Jesse, more of Doc, and get to know her other family members better. I don’t know if I’ll be reading the next book soon, but I do plan to read it at some point.