Feature and Follow Friday 2013 #3

Feature and Follow Friday is sponsored by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.  The purpose of this event is to learn about the two featured bloggers each week, as well as to increase your own blog following by joining in on the fun!  Here is this week's question:

Q: What is your guilty pleasure as far as reading? Is it a genre, or is it a certain type of book?

First I have to say that after last night's episode of Glee being about guilty pleasures, I LOVE this questions.  But, this is a hard question, as I don't feel guilty about anything I read really.  I guess I could say it is the books that are published that go along with tv shows that I like.  Such as the Supernatural tv show, or the SyFy show Eureka, to name a few.  At one point I was on a mission to acquire every single book that was written with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show, and I think I have most of them, that were still available to order online new.  I also got as many of the books that went with the short-lived show The 4400, and those with The X-Files.  So I guess my need to read any story that goes with my favorite shows would be my guilty pleasure.

What about you?  Do you have any guilty pleasures?

On Fire: A Teen Wolf Novel by Nancy Holder

On Fire by Nancy Holder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was so excited when I saw that I could email the author and get a copy of this book for review. So I immediately did that, and very soon it came in the mail! So I put it on my next to read list since it had already been published. The reason I wanted to read this book is because I was first introduced to the writing of Nancy Holder from her Buffy the Vampire Slayer novelizations. And I always loved the ones that she had written. She has a way of capturing the characters' personalities and making it feel as if you are actually watching an episode of the show. And to be able to do this with such a well crafted show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, well, you know what a great author that makes her. Teen Wolf is one of my new favorite shows. While I still love the original movie, and the tv show departs quite a bit from that, I love the characters in the show. Especially Stiles. I actually like him much more on the tv show than I did in the movie. Nancy Holder did not disappoint with this tv show tie-in novel.
Now I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that as I watched Teen Wolf during the 1st season, I would often be playing on the computer, so I'm sure there are a few storylines I missed. But I think this was one of those stories that didn't actually happen on the show, something that could have happened during the times we didn't see. And I liked getting the back story. What the relationship between Derek and Allison's aunt Kate was before. More information about Jackson. And I even like towards the end when Derek's memories gave us a little glimpse into the lives of both Scott and Stiles when big events were occurring in their families.
I have been more careful about what books I give 5 stars to lately. But since I feel this book captures the essence of the tv show so well, like the Buffy books I read by this author, I had to give this a 5 as well. And I really hope there will be more tie-in novelizations, especially done by her!
Oooh, and I just realized, I still need an "N" book for my A-Z Reading Challenge, and since this author's first name is Nancy, I'll use this to fill that in!!

View all my reviews

Ghost Whisperer: Revenge by Doranna Durgin

I enjoyed the tv series this book is based on, and saw the books at the bookstore where I work.  When they became strip cover books at the store, I took one or two of them home, and now that the series is no longer being filmed, I decided it was time to read them to get my fix of the show.  Well, actually, I started reading this in September of 2010.  I was keeping it in my car for when I went places and forgot to bring a book to read.  I had been keeping books from the tv series The 4400, and those were always good for reading.  But now that I have the Nook app on my iphone, and I'm doing better with bringing books with me, I didn't really get around to reading it.  Plus, this book really needed to be read within shorter breaks, because it got kind of hard to keep up with the story when I hadn't read it in a while.  So I brought it in the house and kept it by my nice Jacuzzi tub so that when I was reading on my Nook, or a book I'd checked out from the store, I would have a book I didn't mind if it accidentally got wet or dropped in the tub. 
GRRRRRR!!  I just hit a key and it deleted my whole 2nd paragraph of this review!  Then it automatically saved without it like 1 second!  Okay, let's see if I can remember what all I said.  First I had some complaints about the characters, Rick Payne, who was played by Jay Mohr, his character didn't seem to have quite the same part in helping Melinda as he did in the show.  Then Delia, played by Camryn Manheim, seemed way more accepting of Melinda's "talent" than she did in the actual show.  But again, not exactly sure maybe when in the timeline this was supposed to have occurred.  Other than that, it really played just like an episode of the show.  I liked that you didn't know who the killer was till the end.  There were 3 ghosts bothering Melinda.  One that knew exactly why he wanted to exact revenge on, even if the person he chose wasn't actually the killer, just someone who didn't do anything to help him.  The other seemed really confused, didn't know who he was or what he wanted, or at least couldn't really communicate with Melinda.  All he could do was keep repeating "swing, batter, batter, swing" and usually at times that it warned Melinda to upcoming danger.  But soon we learned the connection between the ghosts.  And the way their issues were solved was a good way I think.  I'll be sure to read the next book I have from this series in a similar way.  But I may skip to one about the tv series Eureka next.  Especially since that show only has part of a season left before it is cancelled.