Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Darkside by Beth Fantaskey

Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Darkside by Beth Fantaskey

Publisher: Harcourt (February 1, 2009)
Hardcover: 368 pages
Age Group: Young Adult

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Marrying a vampire definitely doesn't fit into Jessica's senior year "Get-A-Life" plan.
Enter a bizarre new exchange student named Lucius Vladescu who claims Jessica is a Romanian vampire princess by birth and he's her long-lost fiance. He's arrogant, officious, embarrassingly protective, and, well, incredibly hot.
Armed with a copy of Growing up Undead: A Teen Vampire's Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions, Jessica tries to imagine the transition from an average American teenager to a glam European vampire princess. But just when things start to heat up with Lucius, a devious cheerleader sets her sights on him.
Soon Jess finds herself fighting to win back her wayward prince, stop a global vampire war—and save Lucius's soul from eternal damnation. All of which leaves her to wonder: Wouldn't life be easier if she could just fall for a nice mortal boy?

First off: This wasn't what I was expecting when I first learned about the novel. At all. I mean, it sounded really, really good. But I thought it would be a little like all the other vampire books I'd read. I hate getting into a novel like that, because I love vampires and I love reading about them. So I was a bit worried when I first got this book.

But I was wrong! Oh, so wrong!

I never expected to love it as much as I did. This quickly made it to my number one favorite book before I was even done with it. (It shares a number one spot with Claudia Gray's Evernight.)

Fantaskey recreated the genre and made it her own. Which is extremely hard to do nowadays with the amount of Young Adult novels that are out in the book world. Plus the percentage of them that include vampires in them.

I can't remember how many times I cried while reading Jessica's Guide. And how many times I got completely ticked off with Lucius. At first I thought I was going to hate him throughout the book, but a little ways in I started to fall in love with him just as Jess was.

At first while I was reading, I thought things were moving a bit too fast. Too many things were happening and it was just the first chapter. But now that I'm done with it, I feel that if those things didn't happen as fast as they did, all the other events wouldn't have played out as great as they did.

I also loved how Fantaskey threw in some things from Lucius' perspective. It added to the story and really let you get to know him more, and how his mind worked.

I really liked Jess, too. She was an amazing protagonist. All her feelings were geniune and real and I felt I really got to know her throughout the novel. I feel as though she's one of my best friends. Which I love those feelings when reading a book.

I felt all the minor characters really added to the story too. They were all really interesting and I loved Jess' best friend, Mindy.

Fantaskey's style of writing was really great, as well. It all really flowed well and drew you in. I always felt as though I were right there, experiencing all the events that were happening throughout the novel.

Overall, it was a GREAT read. I will definitely be reading this again in the future. It's one of those novels where you have to reread them at least once or twice every year.
The end was very good, and it's great as a standalone novel. I was very pleased with the ending. But I'd still love to know more about the characters and the events that happen after the last page of the book.