Dis­claimer: I adore read­ing For­ever Young Adult. Though I’m not huge into YA books, there’s some­thing about the snarky, per­son­able and humor­ous way that the website’s review­ers tackle things. I love the way they break down each book review into whether you’d be best friends with the char­ac­ters (BFF Charm), whether they’d date the book if the book was a dude, and a range of bonus fac­tors. They even rate the cover of the book (and believe me, this can get hilar­i­ous with the amount of cov­ers fea­tur­ing float­ing, head­less teenagers).

So I was hon­ored to the max when Jenny told me she’d be more than happy to read and review Dark­house. I mean, how awe­some was that? Even if she hated the book, I knew I’d prob­a­bly laugh my ass off read­ing the review.

Well she didn’t hate the book. In fact, she totally wants to date it (and you should want to, too). Here are some hilar­i­ous excerpts from the review:

On Perry:
“Perry totally needs a BFF to have her back, ’cause the girl’s life has felt like one big slap in the face. It’s not easy to grow up strug­gling with your self-image, and your propen­sity for curves when your mom is a for­mer model and your lit­tle sis­ter takes after her com­pletely. But Perry, I would be there for you. We could go thrift­ing for old band t-shirts and comfy boots, and you could bake pie, and I would totally eat it with you, and I would believe you when you told me about the weird things you see. Just don’t ask me to go to that light­house with you.”

On Perry + Dex:
“Perry and Dex. Oh, Dex and Perry. Dex, how I found you swoony with your 90′s eye­brow ring, I’ll never know. But some­how, those stormy eyes or yours won me over. But you guys, how you frus­trate me with your flir­ta­tion and grow­ing feel­ings for each other!

This book keeps you on the edge of your seat ask­ing the ‘will they or won’t they’ ques­tion, while build­ing up sex­ual ten­sion like boil­ing water in a teapot. All I can say is: they better.”

On the author:
“Halle’s first-person nar­ra­tive is writ­ten in a breezy fash­ion that instantly made me feel like I could hang out with her pro­tag­o­nist. Perry has the voice of a true young woman –from her strengths to her idio­syn­cra­cies– includ­ing her sometimes-use of obscure adjec­tives and flow­ery descrip­tion. She also writes some seri­ously scary shit. Like, not ‘give you night­mares’ scary, but full-on haunt­ing sus­pense that left my pulse rac­ing on more than one occasion. ”

And bonus fac­tors — mus­taches:
“I’m going to let you in on a lit­tle secret. I love a mus­tache. Up until the damn dirty hip­sters (said in a Michael Cain voice) com­man­deered it a cou­ple of years ago, I had been able to con­vince my hus­band (a noto­ri­ously lazy shaver) to wear them from time to time. From the trucker to the drug dealer to the 80′s gay porn star mus­tache, to the, yes, Errol Flynn –I love them all. I think they’re sexy. What is wrong with me? I ask myself that ques­tion often. Any­way, this book has one.”

Read the rest HERE I beg ya.

Give­away of Dark­house and Red Fox books

On a related note, Book Blog­ger Char­lie Court­land of Bitsy Bling Books is offer­ing a Dark­house AND Red Fox give­away. If you enter and win, you’ll be receiv­ing either both paper­back copies or both e-copies of the books. This works out amaz­ingly well, because when you’re done Dark­house, you’re going to want to start Red Fox (and no I’m not toot­ing my own horn here. OK, just a little…toot). The con­test runs till June 24th, so head over NOW to Bitsy Bling Books.

PS Paper­back copies of Red Fox WILL be avail­able on Ama­zon soon. We’re hav­ing a postal strike here in Canada which is mak­ing things a bit dif­fi­cult. Damn you posties, I have books to sell! Of course, e-versions are avail­able (con­vinced postal strike has been imple­mented by e-readers).