Uninvited by Amanda Marrone

I’m pretty lenient when evaluating YA fiction, as I have to keep in mind that I am 26, not 16, so my interests are a little different now that I am rapidly approaching ancient (as my students would say). The House of Night Series, for example, is not my favorite now, as an adult, but you’d better believe it would have made my top ten if I were a teenager. However, I can’t say much that is flattering to Uninvited by Amanda Marrone. Basically, it’s about a seventeen year old girl who stays drunk most of the time, snorts lines, smokes weed, and sleeps around. But amazingly enough, her big problem is that her ex-boyfriend, who is now a vampire, comes to her window every night, begging for her to let him in. Of course, he only wants inside so he can rip her throat out. Nice. However, she deludes herself into thinking he loves her and wants to come inside so that they can be together forever. Um…okay. So that’s the big struggle: to invite him in or not to invite him in. Most readers would have established that a guy who has slept his way through an entire cheer-leading squad is not worth inviting inside, dead, alive, undead, or otherwise.  I will admit that our main character, Jordan, does wise up and make some better decisions by the end, but overall, this novel (while imaginative, I suppose) simply didn’t have much bite.