Book Review and Giveaway: Senior Year Bites

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Senior year is supposed to be fun: boys, dances and graduation.

It's significantly harder to enjoy it when you're dead.

Truth or Dare is supposed to be fun too. It's not even close to dangerous, so playing at Steph's house didn't seem like a bad idea. My dare? Spend the rest of the night in the graveyard next to her house. It was only a couple of hours until false dawn, my proscribed return time, so no big deal right? Right.

I survived the attack, but it took me a few days to figure out what was going on. I mean vampires might stalk pop culture, but they're just myths. Yeah. Not so much.

School is a lot more difficult when you're a nocturnal creature of the night. I was managing, but I couldn't keep it hidden from my friends for long. After I managed to accidentally save one of our cheerleaders from her drunk and ill-intentioned boyfriend. Steph decided that we should be cool, like superheroes, and fight crime.

Only I'm a vampire, not a hero, and we live in a sleepy New England town, so crime's a little harder to come by. At least it is until a serial killer moves into the area. He's got the authorities stumped, but then again, the cops don't have a teenage, blood-sucking, non-hero on their team.

Senior Year Bites is the debut novel of J.A. Campbell. It was a fun, fast-paced read. There seemed to be a bit too much going on. If the story had stuck to just vampires, I think it would have worked better for me. Other supernaturals were thrown into the mix. And I’m particularly picky about the use of faeries and their lore.

I enjoyed most of the characters. I know our main character, Meg, was going through quite a bit, but I just couldn’t make any connection with her. Her moods and attitude often changed too fast to follow. And some of the events that happened were either too coincidental or just weren’t believable enough for me. That being said, it was a fun book, and I hope you all check it out. Read to the bottom of this post to find out how to be entered to win a copy of Senior Year Bites.

The Main Characters of Senior Year Bites by J.A. Campbell

People always ask authors where they get their ideas. Do they base their characters off of people they knew, that kind of thing.

I don’t directly base my characters off of anyone. I do draw from experiences though. Everyone does. In the case of Senior Year Bites, Meg, Steph and Ann’s friendship was drawn from a similar (without the supernatural elements unfortunately) friendship I had in middle school and high school.

I had two friends and we hung out together through most of middle school and part of high school. We did a ton of things together, especially when we were younger. I drew a lot from that friendship when I wrote Meg, Steph and Ann. Now, I didn’t say, oh, Steph is D, Meg is me and Ann is S by any means. There are elements of all of us in each character. And I did not base Meg off of myself at all. I also drew from other people and experiences when I shaped those characters.

It was kind of fun to draw from that past relationship though. Some memories it brought up were great, some painful. Some were along the lines of ‘what was I thinking.’ My only defense was that I was young and had a lot to learn. Still do incidentally.

Incidentally, the guys in Senior Year Bites are not directly drawn from high school people I knew. They were created the way I make most of my other characters. Little bits from here, little bits from there.

Anyway, that’s a brief insight into three of the main characters in Senior Year Bites.

Want to win a copy of Senior Year Bites? Just leave me a comment and a way to contact you. In addition to Senior Year Bites, you will win one other title from Decadent Publishing. Winners choice!

Want to win more? Other giveaways are listed below, as well as info on the grand prize. Good luck!

Decadent Publishing Worldwide YA Blog Stomp

Follow the Decadent Publishing YA authors as they travel around the world, giving away goodies along the way and collecting entries for our

GIANT KINDLE GIFT PACK!

Comment on as many blogs on the tour as you want, each day you comment counts as one entry into the Grand Prize drawing.

Blog Tour Schedule 

July 2 - Daily Dose of Decadence

July 5 -  Julie Particka

July 6 -  The Romance Studio chat

July 7 - Enduring Romance

July 8 - The Compulsive Reader

July 11  -Zombies Don't Blog

July 12 - The Eclectic Reader

July 13 - Vanessa Barger

July 14 - Moonlight Gleam's Bookshelf

July 15 - Sassy Book Lover

July 17 - Awesomesauce Book Club

July 18 -  Leslie Soule

July 19 - Jon Gibbs

July 20 - Julie Campbell

July 21 - Aine's Realm

July 24 - Daily Dose of Decadence

July 25 - Reader Girls  

July 26 - Romance Author Hotspot

July 27 - Musings of a YA Reader

                  Pensive Bookeaters

July 28 - Coffee Time Romance

July 30 - Jen Wylie
August 1 - GRAND PRIZE Giveaways! Daily Dose of Decadence 

GRAND PRIZE
1 Kindle loaded with 6 Decadent Publishing Young Adult ebooks! 

1ST PRIZE

12 Decadent Publishing ebooks of winner's choice, 1 per month for 12months.

2ND PRIZE

6 Decadent Publishing ebooks of winner's choice, 1 every month for 6 months.