[openbook booknumber=”0064471209″][rating:4/5]

For every fan of the new modern love triangle, “tru wuv”, your love is my drug, I will die without you YA romance novels that have been published recently I humbly beg and plead for you to read this book. It’s time for you to wake up.

Missing Angel Juan is a fantastical, magical, fairy tale story that addresses some very real emotions, needs and addictions of a teen couple that separate due to their fear and addiction to love.

[openbook booknumber=”0064470954″][rating:4/5]

In Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys the story arc in the Dangerous Angels series continues. What started with Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby continues in this book with the kids now teenagers and the adults in the household all out of town filming a movie in South America. Naturally Cherokee, Witch Baby, Raphael Chong Jah-Love and soon even Angel Juan, who makes a reappearance, run into trouble.

[openbook booknumber=”0064470652″][rating:4/5]

In Witch Baby Francesca Lia Block really spreads her wings and finds her pace. Witch Baby is the second book in her Dangerous Angels series and is her sophomore novel. You really need to have read Weetzie Bat for Witch Baby to make any sense.

Witch Baby is my favorite character in the whole crazy Bat family. She is a black sheep, an outsider, a loner. She doesn’t want to stick her head in the sand and forget about the troubles in the world, or pretend they don’t exist. She doesn’t try and use smoke and mirrors in the guise of drugs, alcohol, parties, etc to hide from the ugly truth of the world. She faces it head on. She puts it on display for everyone to see and forces other people to acknowledge the pain and suffering, the poisons and toxins, the ignorance and fear.

[openbook booknumber=”0064470687″][rating:3/5]

The first time I read Weetzie Bat was at a very young age, and really too young for the subject matter at hand. The writing might lead you to think otherwise as it is really written at a 6th grade or lower level. Publisher’s Weekly says its perfect for 12 and up, the School Library Journal says 10th grade and up. See the disparity?

Weetzie Bat was Francesca Lia Block’s first novel and the first in her Dangerous Angels series. I wanted to re-read it to capture some of the adventure and sparkle and hope I had gotten the first time around when I read it at the young age of 12. I was an outcast, a loner, a reader and a ridiculously creative dreamer (in the crazy sunshine and rainbows way, though if you are here reading this at my blog you probably already knew that). I still got some of that magic, but now I’m older and not all of it managed to keep its hold. As an adult there were some problems, some hitches, some flaws. Mainly my naivete is gone and with it went a lot of my original enjoyment of the book.

[openbook booknumber=”9780061490002″][rating:3/5]

I think this book and story line could have a lot of potential as a young adult novel and future fantasy series but I think it ended up being too big and ambitious for one book. It also ended up losing a lot by going for the easy way out in characterization and in trying too hard to cater to a teen audience.

In this story poor Astrid has to switch gears pretty hard to go from a typical teenage girl seriously considering letting a guy sleep with her to get asked to the prom to having him be almost murdered by a renegade unicorn (a being that, until that moment, Astrid had firmly believed was a myth). As a result Astrid, a virgin from a bloodline of unicorn hunters, gets sent abroad to a special cloister for training in becoming a fearsome hunter of these bloodthirsty, semi-intelligent beasts. Unfortunately Astrid does not want to become a unicorn hunter and finds out that the cloisters contain more secrets than answers and that perhaps the world of unicorn hunting is not all that it seems.