Still Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley

Title: Still Sucks to Be Me
Author: Kimberly Pauley
Age Group: Teens
# of Pages: 374
My Rating: 4/5

Mina Ham---, wait no, Smith, is now officially living in the middle of nowhere. Oh how exciting her new vampire life will be...not.

Missing both her boyfriend, George, and BFF, Serena, Mina tries to adapt to her new home. At school, she has this cute guy named Grady who is persistently going after her and mean girl Kacie who simply dislikes her. All is not so bad when vampire dud Cameron is helping her around town! Can things get any more complicated with her social life here? What is worse is that Raven may be stalking Serena! Should she be worried about this vampire-wannabe?

As Mina tries to adjust to her new environment, she learns how to use her new power and the history of vampires (where the bad ones might be back in town, ready to strike again!).

I loved Sucks to Be Me and Still Sucks to Be Me is definitely a great sequel! I love the light and fun atmosphere of this novel along with the cute vampire drawings in the beginning of every chapter. Mina is still the awesome protagonist that I remembered from the first novel. I feel sorry for her because as a vampire, things for her should be more cool. Instead, she is completely removed from society and is allowed no contact with her friends since she is presumably "dead". That definitely sucks. However, I found it really wicked how she is able to change her appearances to whoever she chooses to. I don't think I have read about any vampires that could change their face so that's a plus.

A couple of side characters were not exactly fleshed out (Kacie and Grady to be more specific). Even though they did their part in the story, I wished there were more to them. I tried to understand why Grady likes Mina so much but could not. He sort of stuck himself to her like an octopus pretty much near the beginning when they met. There weren't really any relationship between them for him to like her so much beyond being neighbours/classmates. She tried avoiding him as much as she could so I didn't see why he still hung on. Kacie is your usual mean girl, being mean for no reason. I wish she isn't that typical throw-in character, you know? But I had to love what had happened to her later on in the book.

I took quite a bit of liking towards Cameron. I rooted for George and Mina in the last novel but after this one, I decided to switch. Did anything happen to the two? Well that you have to read and find out yourself!

I hope there is a third novel in the series because I feel that Mina should definitely come back! If you haven't read Sucks to Be Me yet, go check it out now! (Review in tags). And if you did, go get the sequel this coming May 11th!

Fun Fact: In the process of creating Still Sucks to Be Me, Kimberly asked her readers to suggest a name for her mean girl. And guess who suggested Kacie? Yep, I was the only one who did!

Review copy provided by Kimberly Pauley.