Scorch (Croak #2) by Gina Damico

This is a book, a series, that I love, love, love!!  And of course it is in #7 in my September is for Sequels Challenge.  Again, it has been sitting on my TBR shelf forever, which was a huge oversight on my part, because like the first one, it was soooo good!  One I didn't want to put down, even when I had to because I had to work, or sleep, or drive, etc.
We left off with Zara having somehow gotten Lex's ability to damn people.  Now, it might not seem so horrible that she got that power, because the people she is damning, which also basically incinerates them, are all horrible criminal type people, murderers, etc.  But for the Grim Reapers in this story, that is not allowed.  They are only allowed to kill those who are supposed to be dead according to their instructions.  Because of what happened, Lex is back in the town of Croak to try to help catch Zara.  But when she gets back, she finds that some in the town are not happy to have her back, in fact they have decided to punish all of the Junior Reapers.  Things take a turn when Zara begins damning innocents, a fact which the town is even unhappier about because she has come to Lex with a demand.  A demand for the "wrong book", the one that a mythical Grim from the past, Grotton supposedly wrote about how to do all the things he decided to do that went against the rules.  Soon a few of the townspeople convince most of the others that they must get rid of Lex's Uncle Mort as mayor, and take over.  Then when a bombing occurs in the middle of town, they decide they must put all the juniors and Mort in jail.  When they finally escape, Mort takes them to another Grim town, DeMyse.  DeMyse is way different from Croak, it is quite a bit like Las Vegas in description.  Here they try to hide from Zara, one reason they feel this is a good place is that she hasn't really gone to take anyone from there as she has from the other Grim cities.  All the time they are fighting either their own townspeople, or trying to hide from other dangers like Zara, they continue to try to figure out the mystery of the book that Zara wants, and how they can both find it, and keep it from her.  Along the way there are many surprises, and even a few deaths of characters that we know and love.  I won't tell you who, I'll let you read and discover the sadness for yourself.
I loved the book, I can't say it enough.  This author's writing literally makes me laugh out loud, no matter where I am while I'm reading.  As I said in my review of the first book, Croak, I really enjoy the sarcasm of the characters.  I love the teenage romance between Lex and Driggs.  It is so realistic, and I have to say a relationship that I would be comfortable in, as the sarcasm in my family can be quite that extreme.  One page I had to mark to talk about in my review was page 121, there is a reference to Silent Bob, a character in Kevin Smith movies, that is played by Kevin Smith.  Kevin Smith is one of my favorite actors/directors/writers/personalities.  So I love that he was in this story in this way.  Now, the only thing I didn't like about the book was the ending.  Which actually, I know that the ending is one of the best types there can be.  But, I hate what happens!  I don't want it to happen, and I really hope the author can come up with some kind of way to fix it in the next book, and I don't really care if turns out to be unrealistic.  Maybe it can somehow relate back to one of the surprises that took place with the person that it has to do with in this book.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who liked the tv show Dead Like Me, or enjoys stories about Grim Reapers, and you must also really be a fan of sarcastic people.  There's just no way around it.

Croak by Gina Damico

This is one of the books that I got at BEA, autographed of course!  It was a little further down in my stack to get read until I found out I will get to host the author during August, the Authors Are Our Rock Stars Hop month!  (And also my 3rd blogoversary month, stay tuned for fun!)  And I have to say I'm glad I went ahead and picked it up, and that I get to host Gina Damico, because it was a good, fun read!
I actually used to love the show Dead Like Me, a story about reapers, so this book about a similar type of storyline, reapers, really was a good one for me to read.  This is a bit different though.  In Damico's story, the reapers are still alive, although they do tend to live together in different towns throughout the world.  The main character of this story is Lex, she is 16 years old and has a twin.  But over the last few years she changed, all of a sudden she just started punching people and cursing, and just all around violent behavior.  Finally, it is the last week of school, and the principal would kick her out, but her father promises he's going to send her to her uncle in upstate New York to work on his farm. Now, the funny thing is they tie her down with jump ropes to tell her this.  She of course is not happy about this, but kind of sees that she does need to do something as she is not even sure why she has all this rage and is behaving this way.  She gets to the small town, her uncle shows up, and right away things are weird and crazy!  Then, she finds out he is a reaper, living in a town full of reapers. And he has figured out that her behavior will make her a perfect "Killer"/reaper.  There are partners, a killer, who touches and pulls the soul out of the bodies, and the culler, who collects the soul into a container to be taken back to the afterlife.  Now when they go to do their job, it is like they are frozen in time, and so everything in the scene is stopped.  Lex sees the murderer in one of her first jobs, and wants so bad to be able to kill the bad guy. But that is against the rules.  You can only kill who is supposed to die.  However, they soon find some strange killings are going on, deaths with the cause unknown both by their sources, as well as the people in the real world.  And while Lex kind of understands why this person is doing it, she also knows she really needs to find who is doing this kind of vigilante reaping.    Even when she kind of sees why they are doing it.
First, let me touch on the one thing I had a problem with.  The way Lex was at the beginning, violent and all that, I have trouble identifying with a character like that.  Kind of like I did with Wildefire by Karsten Knight.  But again, same as with that book, once I got into the story, and understood why they were the way they were.  And I grew to really like Lex.  Her sense of humor was awesome.  And I just loved when she'd go to punch people or something similar.  I really liked all the people and their sarcasm in this story.  I really liked the town, and I can't wait to go on and read the next in the series, Scorch.  This was a book I read in basically a day, I didn't want to put it down when I had to, and was always thinking about picking it back up and reading constantly.  The "romance" in the story was so tongue in cheek, without being sappy and silly, and I loved it, seemed so realistic and perfect for the the character of Lex.  There were even a few bits that reminded me a bit of Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events, in how something would be explained, that really you probably already knew, but the way it was done was funny and fit perfectly.

Me with Gina Damico at BEA 2012

Oh yeah, one last thing I have to complain about with the book.  On page 141, one of these explanations says that "As everyone knows, the offer of an onion ring is not to be taken lightly."  Okay, I can go with that, onion rings can be pretty tasty, but the next line is where I beg to differ, "Onion rings are far more valuable than their throw-away side dish counterparts -- french fries and potato chips..."  I would so take french fries over any other side dish.  So, a little disagreement there.  :-)