Living vicariously through YA

This is the deal... I like to walk around book stores and pick up books that seem interesting.  I love to pick up books and read the little blurbs and sometimes one will scream at me to buy it.   Well, this happened to me a few months ago with the book Taken at Dusk.  I bought it and when I went to read it I realized that this was the 3rd book in the series [insert sad face here].  I am one of those people who has to read series in the correct order.  I just am, and I don't plan on getting help for this condition either.  

So here I am and finally I have begun the series.  

The beginning of the book had me worried because I found that I was not really enjoying the book.  Seriously, I thought I was going to get stuck with 3 books that I either was not going to read and that would be a waste of money.  No one wants to waste money, right?  At first I had a really hard time liking Kylie.  It is hard for me to put a finger on it, but I am going to try.  She just seemed so self-involved (which I know is supposed to be  teen girl thing) and sooo judgmental!  Then when the whole romance started up (or really didn't) with Derek I wanted to scream at the book every time she compared him to her ex.  Give the poor boy a break!  

About halfway through the book, a strange thing happened.  I started to like her more.  Really, I think that just like the other kinds at Shadow Falls... I saw some good qualities in her and wanted to give her a chance.  Actually, there are still some things that annoy me about her, but I overlook them.

Overall, I enjoyed my introduction to Shadow Falls Camp and loved getting to know the other characters.  Her ghost and the mystery surrounded him was also fun to read about and it was even more fun to find out the deal with him.  

C.C. Hunter did a nice job tying up some of the story lines, but she did leave one major question unanswered.  Authors of series are evil like that.

 Thankfully, I have the other 2 books in the series so I hopefully will get that question answered soon.  

This is the second book in the Benny Imura series by Jonathan Maberry

I really liked the first book, Rot and Ruin.  It was refreshing to read a zombie book that was not all about killing zombies for survival.  Don't get me wrong... They do kill zombies, but Maberry treats zombies with respect.  Tom teaches the young Benny to value the humans that they used to be and the families who still love and miss the people who they were.

With Dust and Decay, we pick up where we left off at the end of Rot and Ruin.  In this adventure, the group leaves the safety of Mountainside in search of the mysterious jet plane they saw at the end of the first book.  They take along Benny's best friend for a little camping trip in the Ruin before they take off for good. Of course, the little camping trip does not go as planned and they discover that there are new dangers and a new regime trying to take over Charlie Pinkeye's old territory and these new guys may be even more cruel and crazy than Charlie was (if that is possible).  

Although I enjoyed this book, I found that at times I grew a bit impatient with the pacing.  About halfway through the group gets separated and so the chapters start to jump around from one character to another.   The ending is strong and everything comes together in the end. 

This book also introduces a lot of the friends and other bounty hunters who were just hinted at in the first book.  I really liked the introduction of new characters and they were able to shed some more light on Tom's character and how important he is in the Rot and Ruin. 

Really, when it comes down to it. This book is the classic good vs. evil set up.   Maberry continues to make you think about human nature and the choices people make in the name of survival. 

In the end, I was not as in love with this book as I was with the first book in the series.  The series is losing steam for me.   I am not sure if I will keep reading on or if I just need another extended break from the series.  At any rate, I still appreciate what Maberry did with this series.