Review: Drain You by M. Beth Bloom - Farah

Title: Drain You

Author: M. Beth Bloom 

Publication date: July 24th, 2012
Publisher: HarperTeen

Genre(s): Young Adult (Paranormal)

Challenges: A-Z, Debut

Source: Publisher
Format: ARC

Pages: 400

Add to Goodreads | HarperCollins 

Every night I'd lie there in bed and look out at the hills behind our house, listening. I knew there'd be consequences.

Actions meant reactions. Sunrises meant sunsets. My fear was too permanent, lasting longer than eyeliner, something I wore every day and didn't wash off.

Quinlan Lacey's life is a red carpet of weird fashions, hip bands, random parties, and chilling by the pool with her on-and-off BFF Libby. There's also her boring job (minimum wage), a crushed-out coworker (way too interested), her summer plans (nada), and her parents (totally clueless). Then one night she meets gorgeous James, and Quinn's whole world turns crazy, Technicolor, 3-D, fireworks, whatever.

But with good comes bad and unfortunately, Quinn's new romance brings with it some majorly evil baggage. Now, to make things right, she has to do a lot of things wrong (breaking and entering, kidnapping, lying, you name it).

I'm going to have to say that I started this book with a negative attitude. Well it's not actually negative, but I was a bit hesitant to be honest. When I looked at the ratings on goodreads, they were all one or two. That was really shocking to see, because I actually thought that this was going to be a good book. Well, I'm glad that I was one of those people who actually enjoyed this book! It started off as a really funny, sarcastic contemporary book! It was all sarcasm, which I absolutely loved! The main protagonist, Quinlan, is one of those unique girls. I can say that I really liked her. M. Beth Bloom did a great job in writing about her, because Quin seemed really realistic! I think it has been a while since I read about a girl like Quin. Weird, sarcastic, and funny. Loved her to bits.

I have to say the book dragged a bit to get to the main point. It took a pretty long time for the "paranormal" part of the story to start. Morgan, the guy she works with at the video store, likes her. I'm actually very confused about their relationship, and I really did hope that M. Beth Bloom made it clearer to the readers. The book also had parts where you think something's happening, then something entirely different is happening instead. It didn't happen often, but there were parts like that. The paranormal part started about seventy pages through the book. James is the vampire, and his relationship developed too fast with Quin. Alot of this book seems very similar to Twilight, so you can say the relationship was similar to Bellas and Edwards. That's why the story felt a bit predictable, and I wished the author twisted things a bit.

Overall, the main story wasn't that strong. The "bad" guys didn't seem important to me, and it felt like it shouldn't have been the main problem in the book. Putting that aside, it felt like a funny romantic novel to me, with a twist of paranormal. I'm not sure if this is part of a series or not, but the ending was weird. It didn't feel like it was an ending at all, but maybe that's going to be continued in the second installment. Drain You is a good book, and it was a good laugh as well. I do recommend it if you want a light read, or something that's a bit more fun.