Review: Death and the Girl Next Door by Darynda Jones

Death and the Girl Next Door
(Darklight #1)
Darynda Jones
Release: October 2, 2012
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Ten years ago, Lorelei's parents disappeared without a trace. Raised by her grandparents and leaning on the support of her best friends, Lorelei is finally beginning to accept the fact that her parents are never coming home. For Lorelei, life goes on.

High school is not quite as painful as she thinks it will be, and things are as normal as they can be. Until the day the school's designated loner, Cameron Lusk, begins to stalk her, turning up where she least expects it, standing outside her house in the dark, night after night. Things get even more complicated when a new guy—terrifying, tough, sexy Jared Kovach—comes to school. Cameron and Jared instantly despise each other and Lorelei seems to be the reason for their animosity. What does Jared know about her parents? Why does Cameron tell Jared he can't have Lorelei? And what will any of them do when Death comes knocking for real? Thrilling, sassy, sexy, and inventive, Darynda Jones's first foray into the world of teens will leave readers eager for the next installment.

Review: 

If you have followed my reviews you may have noticed that I love Darynda Jones' adult series, Charley Davidson. Those books always get four and five stars from me and I typically gush about Jones' ability to combine humor, romance and mystery to no end. So when I heard she was writing a young adult series I figured there would be more gushing.

While I didn't hate this book, it didn't live up to what I thought it would be. Maybe my expectations were too high but I just didn't find the same magic with DEATH AND THE GIRL NEXT DOOR. In fact, even though I read this book prior to its release, I have held off for some time in writing a review because I was so confounded. So here we go.

DEATH AND THE GIRL NEXT DOOR follows Lorelei, who is supposed to be a high school student but often acts too innocent and silly to be one. Lorelei's attempts at humor just sounded immature to me. I enjoyed Lorelei's best friends, Brooklyn and Glitch, much more. They had the best one-liners in this book, in my opinion, and I loved all the scenes involving them. I also liked Cameron, who grows a lot throughout the course of this book. Even though we don't really know what the heck is going on with him for most of the plot. I immediately liked his attitude and fierceness.

Jared is the mysterious new guy who we are supposed to love but I found slightly boring. He's a typical YA genre hot-guy-hero and my feelings toward him were kind of Meh. The insta-love between Lorelei and Jared is of the worst kind - literal instant love. Lorelei sees him and BOOM she loves him. Its kind of like a little kid having a crush on a grown up - its weird and sudden and could they, like, have a conversation first? Jared's feelings are just as bad. His reasoning for saving Lorelei when he does is kind of stupid and there was some extreme eye rolling on my part.

While the plot was entertaining and I was interested in finding out what was going on, it lost its steam a bit for me with the introduction of a bunch of Christian mythology and religious stuff. I was less than thrilled with the church and preachiness.

I'm giving this book three stars, but they are shaky ones. I haven't decided if I will check out the next in the series yet, but I certainly still love Darynda Jones and her adult series.

Recommended for fans of: Alice in Zombieland and light young adult