Review: LOVE YOU TO DEATH

Love You To Death by Meg Cabot
Book 1 of The Mediator series
Narrated by Johanna Parker
Format: paperback, audiobook
Genre: YA, urban fantasy

About Love You To Death:

Meet Susannah Simon: she's a typical teenage girl, who just happens to be a ghost-hunter ...oh, and she's also dead-over-heels for Jesse - the sexiest spook ever! But can this girl get her ghost? In "Love You to Death", Suze arrives in California and has barely unpacked when her mediator skills are put to the test. A vicious spirit in her new school is hell-bent on making her life a complete nightmare, but Suze is more than ready to kick some serious ghost butt if she has to. In "High Stakes", Suze's new life is looking up - cool friends, pool parties and getting to know Jesse (swoon), but then a desperate spirit asks for her help. Suddenly she's on the trail of a creepy local businessman, who just might be a vampire. Life just got dead complicated. Again.

Source: Info in the About Love You To Death was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7704979-love-you-to-death-high-stakes on 13/10/2012.

Review:

I've never tried Meg Cabot before so I decided to start with this one. Another reason for picking up this book is that, I already have the book. Bought it on sale at Tesco and had been sitting in my TBR pile for the longest time! Third reason is that it's in my genre, urban fantasy. Fourth reason is that the audio format is free from the Library. And last but not the least, I love listening to Johanna Parker! So the moment I knew that there is an audio format of this book by Johanna Parker, I would have bought it if it wasn't free from the library. But good thing for my budget, I didn't have to. So, biased as I am with Johanna Parker, it goes without saying that the narrator is going to rate a 5 out of 5 even before I started listening to this audiobook!

What I love the most about this book, though, is the character development. This is a young adult (YA) book right? But there isn't any of that too stupid to live (TSTL) characteristics that some authors think that they must endow their characters if they are YA to make them YA. WTF! Thank god Meg Cabot is not one of them! Anyway, Suze, our main protagonist, still make mistakes as one expects of a young person but somehow the author manages to make it so that it does not feel like our young protagonist is TSTL. Instead it makes a reader relate to the character. It makes Suze endearing instead of annoying.

This is the shortest audiobook I've ever listened to, giving it the impression that this book is a whole lot quicker than the 6 hours it is suppose to be. I imagine that if I was reading the paperback (without listening to the audiobook format at the same time), I would say that this book is a quick little read!

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4
Character development = 5
Story itself = 4
Ending = 4.5
World building = 5
Cover art = 3
Pace = (5 hours & 59 minutes listening time)
Plot = 4
Narration = 5

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries

Thank you to the RCT Library for letting me borrow this audiobook.

FTC Disclosure:
The audiobook format was borrowed from the library. The paperback omnibus was purchased from Tesco with personal funds. No money received for this review.