Friday Finds

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week (and add to your TBR lists)? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

Gosh! This week is full with excellent new discoveries for me while looking through other people's reading blog!!

My Finds:

Title: Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side; Beth Fantaskey
ISBN: 0547259409
Publisher: Graphia (January 18, 2010)
Pages: 384
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Starred Review. A romance involving a high school girl and a handsome vampire may sound a little too familiar, yet this first novel quickly bursts ahead of the pack of Twilight-wannabes. Down-to-earth mathlete Jessica Packwood is completely horrified when, a few months shy of her 18th birthday, a Romanian named Lucius Vladescu shows up on her doorstep, claiming that he and she are vampire royalty betrothed to each other since infancy—what's worse, her adoptive parents verify the betrothal story and explain that her birth parents identified themselves as vampires, too. Fantaskey makes this premise work by playing up its absurdities without laughing at them, endowing Jessica with a coolly ironic sensibility and Lucius with old-world snobberies that Jessica's girlfriends find irresistible. Jessica's laidback parents serve as foils for imperious Lucius (Can I ever again be happy in our soaring Gothic castle after walking the halls of Woodrow Wilson High School, a literal ode to linoleum? he asks sarcastically); a scene at a steakhouse where the vegan Packwoods meet the carnivorous Vladescus is first-rate comedy. The romance sizzles, the plot develops ingeniously and suspensefully, and the satire sings. Ages 14–up. (Feb.)

Title: In Stereo Where Available; Becky Anderson
ISBN: 1933836202
Publisher: Medallion Press (November 1, 2007)
Pages: 350
Genre: Romance

Phoebe Kassner didn't set out to become a 29-year-old virgin, but she is, and, having just been dumped by her boyfriend, she doesn't see that situation changing anytime soon. Meanwhile, her twin sister Madison—aspiring actress, small-time model, and queen of the short attention span—has just been eliminated on the first round of Singing Sensation. Things aren't looking so great for either of them, but when Phoebe, victim of a fake phone number written on a cocktail napkin, receives a surprise voice mail from a guy named Jerry, she takes pity on him and calls, setting in motion a serendipitous love story neither of them saw coming. And suddenly Madison has a romance of her own, as one of 12 women competing for two men on a ruthless, over-the-top reality show. As Phoebe falls in love with the jilted high school English teacher who never intended to call her in the first place, Madison's falling in love, too, clawing and fighting her way through a tide of adorable blondes.

Title: Hopscotch; Kevin J. Anderson
ISBN: 0553576402
Publisher: Spectra (April 29, 2003)
Pages: 480
Genre: Science Fiction

In Hopscotch, evolution has provided humankind with the ability to swap bodies. All this hopscotching creates a corrupt, decadent society where just about anything goes and immortality is just one more body swap away. Bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson follows four twentysomethings: Garth, a driven artist; Eduard, an unfocused roustabout; Teresa, a self-destructive seeker of spiritual solace; and Daragon, a driven G-man who alone is not blessed (or cursed) with the ability to hopscotch. The four make their way through a dizzying reality where only their close friendship can be taken at face value. Daragon's inability to hopscotch results in his knack for revealing the true person behind the face, no matter what the body, a skill that propels him to the top of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations--a many-tentacled organization dedicated to finding people in a world where looks are always deceiving. Daragon's meteoric rise brings his three friends under the omnipresent gaze of his mentor, the novel's antagonist Bureau chief Mordecai Orb--a looming nemesis whose influence eventually corrupts them all.