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I'm a big fan of supernatural non-fiction books and I was pleased to discover this series, based on podcasts, on Amazon.

The first volume covers Monstrous Creatures, but they're not all monsters. There are definitely some ghosts and more folkloric creatures in there.

I don't listen to podcasts, but apparently, the majority of the chapters are word-for-word transcripts of them, so if you've listened to them, this may not be for you.

Also, if you're a stickler about more formal language for books, don't buy this. It's like listening to someone talk, which is one thing I really like about it. He's got some great dramatic endings to some of these chapters that work just as well in print as spoken, but when you're reading it, you can imagine him talking to you, telling you these stories.

I loved this a lot and am looking forward to the next two: Wicked Mortals (late May) and Dreadful Places (early October).

They are expensive though. My advice is to catch them marked down, which Amazon does a lot.

S.A.S.S. 4

We're off to San Sebastián, Spain with protagonist Elena Holloway. Elena is Spanish on her mother's side and even has a great-aunt and other extended family living in Barcelona, but with her pale skin and brown hair, she doesn't feel Spanish.

Elena thinks of herself as more of an introvert, but she chose to live with a host family instead of in the dorms and they never once take her anywhere. They just give her directions at best. She acclimates to the area faster than any of the other characters we've met so far and navigates Spain with a quiet confidence, although she doesn't believe in her own Spanish skills, so that's a bit of a conflict. Like how is she doing all these things on her own without speaking to people?

Elena comes to Spain to do something her other siblings have not done, but there really is no sibling rivalry and that's not much of the story.

Elena and her group of friends do some sightseeing, but it's not really focused on like it was in some of the other books. Some wander bored through a museum in Madrid while the other half of the group is bored by a bullfight (except for one guy, who loves it). The entire Madrid side trip is a rather pointless excursion with the main thing taken away from it being Elena's conversation with her friend and playwrighting partner Alex about how Elena has to do something to let the guy she likes know she likes him.

The romance is lukewarm at best. Elena has what she feels is a one-sided crush and they only get together for her last few hours in Spain. Friends Jenna and Alex only get together for the same, despite liking each other the entire time.

On one hand, I enjoyed the book, but it felt...too light. She adjusts to being in Spain, despite not using the language, too easily, even going to Barcelona by herself to visit her great-aunt. The relationships aren't properly explored. Alex gets away with barely attending any classes because he's a surfer and somehow nothing is ever done about this. He and Elena have an initial rocky start to their joint play project, but once he gets inspired, he's a good partner. Being in Spain itself seems condensed down to going to tapas bars and liking a Spanish boy. Compared to the others, this one feels like it was phoned in, but it was still better than the boyfriend-obsessed chick in France from last time.

Next stop: MUNICH. The only one of these places I've actually been to and I LOVE Germany. I'm a little worried though, because the protagonist might be a new agey flake. Sigh. We'll see!

S.A.S.S. 3

Mehhhh. This one unfortunately was more like the first. More guy drama than studying and sightseeing. Although this one makes the first look a million times better.

I knew I'd probably be very frustrated with this protagonist, because she didn't want to come to Paris and be away from her precious boyfriend. She's freakin' seventeen and thinks this is the person she'll follow to college then become a housewife and mother for and that's her entire life ambition. It's so antiquated. 

The set up is a bit different, because the students are staying with host families and not dorming it. I got annoyed with this a bit, because it seems so irresponsible. She gets lost on the subway because no one ever shows her the right route. Don't show her on a map. Take her to the school and back. That part was so unrealistic.

I didn't hate this character, because she so obviously has gotten used to other people telling her what to do and it's interesting to see her very slowly realize she has opinions of her own. By the end of the book, she's been dumped and then re-dumped the guy when he wanted to get back together, she's taken control of her pseudo-thing with her host family's dude nanny, she's made a unique group of friends, and she's realizing she can figure out her life on her own.

The friends helped me get through the book. Annika was pretty awesome.

Still the worst one of the four I've read so far, but it wasn't horrible.

Next stop: Spain! I think this chick was the playwright, so that might be interesting. I always approve of writers.

S.A.S.S. 2

Okay, so at the end of last post, I'd had hopes but not quite for this one, writing off the main character because she seemed like a fashionista party girl and not expecting anything much from this.

I was WRONG.

I'm very sad that this author seems to have only ever written two books and the other isn't another from this series. This is the best of the 3 I've read so far.

Kelly's a Chicago party girl who visits Rome mostly to check out the Italian guys and hot outfits.

The first part of the book has her getting caught up in a lot of drama, because she meets a cute guy in the program, but he's a drug-addicted asshole that gets her into massive trouble. The second part is her finding new sides of herself and making unexpected friends. There's a final conflict with the guy that's resolved in Kelly's favor and then she starts going out with a nice Italian boy nearer the end of the book.

This book sticks with my ideal format.

Firstly, it's at least 50% sightseeing. They even travel to Siena, Florence, Pompeii and Tuscany. They do so much sightseeing and it's well-written and just plain fun.

Secondly, the schoolwork is actually deemed important. It's not as focused on as it was in Cece's book, but it's enough to remind the reader that these girls are STUDYING abroad, not just having guy drama abroad.

Thirdly, there's romance, but that's never the focal point.

Fourthly, there are interesting supporting characters. Kelly's old childhood friend is there. Studious, serious and tell it like it is Sheela is pretty awesome. It's never flat out said, but based on her last name, she's Indian-American. Arizona Goth Marina was my favorite though. Not just because she's Goth, but because she's spending a lot of time finding the perfect design for a tattoo to commemorate her mother, who died a couple years before. She's the youngest in a family of car-loving brothers and a father, so she sports car paint as nail polish. And she looks for somewhat creepy details in paintings and is even more blunt than Sheela. She's actually been my favorite character of all the mains and supporting so far in these three books. We'll see if anyone in the rest of the series can hold a candle to her.

I really enjoyed this book, which should be obvious, as I stayed up until almost 4 finishing it and then after 4 writing this up while it was still fresh.

Next stop: France with a girl that seems way too into her boyfriend. I hope this one pleasantly surprises me, too, because the same character is back later on in the series.

S.A.S.S. 1

I was super excited to receive my lot of 10 S.A.S.S. books in the mail today! I'm a big dork, but I'm loving these, despite my couple criticisms from last entry (too Eurocentric, too many white girls). I can't help it. They're fluffy fun.

In the first and what looks like shortest book in the series, Abby is off to London from her home city of New York.

Abby, however, is no Stacey McGill. She's 16, but her parents are so overprotective that I bet she barely enjoys the fact that she lives in my favorite city in the world. Wanting to broaden her horizons because she considers herself too "vanilla," she lets her friend talk her into attending a college party, where she meets her first ever boyfriend. He's a freshman, but the almost-40 part of me says "What does a freshman want with a high school girl? Ew." Abby's parents have the same thoughts and force her to apply for the S.A.S.S. program. She gets in and she's off to London.

Abby's determined to add a little chocolate sauce or sprinkles to her vanilla self and she ends up befriending a punky Philly native with green-striped hair. I liked Zoe's character and wished she'd appeared more. She also meets Ian, a freshman at City College, where the S.A.S.S. program is taking place and summer term is on for the other students.

Unlike with Cece's book, Abby's classes are ones she randomly chose and we never get to meet a single professor. It's barely like she's taking classes at all, even though the point of the series is STUDY abroad.

The sightseeing aspect is also much less, which disappointed me a lot. I loved Cece's book because it blended the romance bits with Cece's personal drama, her schooling and her travelling. This book focuses 99% on the personal drama and it's a disappointment that way.

There is drama indeed, because Abby's got boy trouble. You see, when her parents learned about James and forced her to apply for S.A.S.S. and she got in, she bought him a plane ticket to visit her. Then learned he'd been in a relationship with another girl at the same time. So she's getting over him in London, when she meets Ian, and falls into whirlwind, moving way too fast for 16 (minus the physical part) love with him...until James shows up, having used his ticket. James is there to win Abby back and instead of telling him to fuck off, she decides to run off to Dublin with him for a few days and see if there's anything there worth saving. I felt really bad for Ian, because even though their relationship is doomed by distance, that was still a dick move. While Abby has a good time with James, she sends him flying home without promise of them getting back together. And then avoids Ian for awhile after he blows off her call. They eventually talk, but Abby's decided she wants to be by herself, which is all well and good, but then she shouldn't have led him on in the first place. "*Sebastian voice* Teenagers."

The book is decently-written for what it is and I enjoyed it a lot, even laughed aloud a few times, but I wasn't thrilled that the study and sightseeing aspects were tossed aside so easily. I'm hoping the other authors in this series don't do that. It might explain things a bit that the most recent thing by this author is the novelization of Mean Girls. She's good at drama, but maybe was too lazy to research London to write about it properly.

Next stop: Rome. But the girl's a fashionista, so my Classicist side is likely going to be disappointed in her lack of appreciation of the ancient world.

S.A.S.S. Series

I found this book in Ollie's yesterday for $1.99 and loved the cover. I don't think it's the same artist, but it's definitely reminiscent of English Roses artist Jeffrey Fulvimari. The blurb on the back sounded interesting, so I bought it.

And now I'm hooked.

There are 13 regular books in the series plus one 320-page Super Special. The first book came out in 2005 and the Super Special ended the series in 2010.

Having only read one book, I'm not sure if the formula is all the same, but S.A.S.S. stands for Students Across the Seven Seas and they're definitely all about students studying abroad.

My protagonist, Cece, was 16 and in an anthropology program. Not sure if all the girls are the same age or if there's a range. We'll find out.

Obviously, the anthro program kept things interesting for me, but I've always been a fan of travelling in books. The BSC Super Specials, the Fabulous Five ones, the time the Unicorns went to Hawaii. I loved that stuff. So a book series where the entire point is travelling? So into it. I loved all the sight-seeing done through Cece's eyes.

As I figured, there was a smattering of romance and some brief mean girl shenanigans, but Cece's main dilemma is her family drama. She was adopted from China when she was two and knows nothing of her birth parents, so most of the book's drama comes from her angsting over that.

The book is lightly-written and a fast read, but also thoroughly enjoyable.

I bought a set of 10 on ebay and then the other 3 from another bookseller, so hopefully they arrive quickly, because I'm itching to do some travelling!

My only complaint is that these are decidedly Euro-centric. London, Rome, Spain, Paris (twice with the same character), Munich, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, and Australia make up the majority of the series. Mexico and a Caribbean cruise represent the Americas, as well as an Australian in Washington DC in the Super Special. China is visited by the Chinese girl and Japan by a Japanese-American. No characters seem to be black, based on the book covers. No one goes anywhere in Africa, not even touristy Egypt, or to cool places like India or South America. Perhaps if the series had continued, we would have gotten there, but obviously I think they should have been included earlier. I am really looking forward to the Munich book though. I loved Munich.

I just hope all the authors do as well as Cynthea Liu. Four of them do double duty. One does London and the Aussie/DC Super Special. One does both French books with the same protagonist. One does Munich and Mexico. One does Japan and Finland. The remaining books each have a different author.

Further reviews as the books arrive! But if you want a pretty fun jaunt through China with a mostly likeable protagonist (she's wishy washy sometimes), give this one a read.

AGHM #15-17

I took a break from this series about a month ago and have been reading and rereading other stuff that I haven't opted to review. (Like Harry Potter.)

Part of the reason I took a break was this book. I liked the 1724 Charlestown setting, but other than that, meh. It's a mystery involving pirates, a bitchy potential stepmother and a pack of lies. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either and it just didn't keep my attention long.

Whistler in the Dark was much better. I made myself slog through Skull Island a couple days ago and then picked this one up. It's set in 1867 in a brand new Colorado town. The  main character's mother is a widow who knows how to run a newspaper so she takes herself and her daughter out to Colorado to start the town's paper. Once there, they find that the man who hired the mother painted the town a much prettier picture than it actually is and that at least one person isn't fond of a woman running a paper. As the troubles grow, the main character finds herself with multiple mysteries to solve. It's pretty fast-paced and interesting.

Chilkoot Pass I just finished. It's set during the 1897 Klondike gold rush. It's got interesting characters, which help move the story forward, because they're basically just packhorses the entire story. They just pack their shit and move it and unpack it and eat and sleep, then repeat. Only the adult characters get the joy of moving things repeatedly. It blows my mind that people were that eager for gold that they actually did this crap.

The mystery plot has the main character trying to find a thief in their midst. Money goes missing not once but twice. The first is never solved, but the second one is. But it's not the same person that's taken the rest of their smaller items.

The main wants to be a writer, so I can relate to her there. There's something likeable about her, even though she's not as dynamic as some of the other leads in this series.

The author unfortunately only contributed this one book to the series, as well as a Samantha mystery, which I remember being a pretty good one.