Jaime's Review of Team Human by Sara Rees Brennan & Justine Larbalestier

Team Human

Sara Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier

Hardcover: 352 pages

Release Date: July 3, 2012

Publisher: Harper Teen

ISBN: 0062089649

Source: ARC form the Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review

Rating: Liked

From Goodreads.

Just because Mel lives in New Whitby, a city founded by vampires, doesn’t mean she knows any of the blood-drinking undead personally. They stay in their part of town; she says in hers. Until the day a vampire shows up at her high school. Worse yet, her best friend, Cathy, seems to be falling in love with him. It’s up to Mel to save Cathy from a mistake she might regret for all eternity! On top of trying to help Cathy (whether she wants it or not), Mel is investigating a mysterious disappearance for another friend and discovering the attractions of a certain vampire wannabe. Combine all this with a cranky vampire cop, a number of unlikely romantic entanglements, and the occasional zombie, and soon Mel is hip-deep in an adventure that is equal parts hilarious and touching.

It’s taken me a bit to gather my thoughts on this one. I liked it and I knew going in that it was a spoof on the typical vampire story. With Sara’s humor and wit how could it not be good? I’ve never read anything by Justine so I have nothing to go by there.

Ok so here’s my only complaint. The plot of this story happened during the last part of the book! The whole beginning was best friend meets vampire, falls for vampire, wants to become a vampire, Mel hates vampire, tries to ruin said relationship, it blows up in her face, and she meets a hot guy along the way. No I’m not spoiling anything it basically states that in the synopsis!

That being said I really liked Mel even though her actions seemed futile and redundant she did them with a snarky attitude and humor that I loved. Most of the secondary cast was just meh to me. I thought her bff she was trying to “save” was annoying and so was her vampire beau. The two other characters that made this story enjoyable were Kit (totally hawt boy) and Anna who was there reason there was a story at all.

Oh and there’s mention of zombies? Don’t hold your breath if you’re expecting them to be around much. There’s mention of them and you’ll catch a glimpse of one eventually.

So overall this was a good funny story with a slightly different take on the vampire story and if you like a heroine with spunk I suggest you give it a try!

I chose a passage between Kit and Mel because honestly they were the best parts of the story.

Did vampires take it easily? I guess they had a lot of experience. Centuries of experience getting rejected. After a while you wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in response to the latest dumping.

Oh yes, Cathy was so right, vampirism was a dream come true.

Kit stared at me. “Broken up with? I didn’t break up with you!”

Technically, that was true. Because technically we hadn’t been going out. But I didn’t think it was very gentlemanly of him to point that out. Had Francis taught him nothing?

“You said you’d call!”

“Yes,” Kit said. “Because I was going to call you. Did I not call soon enough? I was about to call you when you showed up at my shade.”

It was my turn to stare at him. “You were about to call me? But you said ‘I’ll call you’.”

“Yes,” Kit said. “You haven’t gone deaf, have you? Or stopped understanding English? Because you’re not making any sense.”

“When a guy says ‘I’ll call you’ it means they’re not going to call you. It means they’re dumping you.”

“What?” Kit said. “I said I was going to call because I was going to call. Why would anyone say that if they weren’t going to do it? That’s completely insane! How do humans even function as a society? That’s like me going to a cheese store and saying ‘Oh, hello I’d like to buy some cheese with this money of mine,’ and getting arrested for shoplifting brie! Actually, I don’t think my cheese metaphor makes sense, though compared to ‘I’ll call you’ meaning ‘get out of my life,’ it’s crystal clear. But that’s because humans don’t make any sense! None!”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice.

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