Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side: Book Review

Jessica’s hope for a wonderful senior year is crushed when a dashing foreign exchange student, Lucius Vladescu, shows up and reveals that the two of them were betrothed at birth, and he fully expects her to hold up her end of the blood pact their parents made by returning to Romania and marrying him. Just when she thought she’d heard the craziest of it, she was in for more big news as Lucius told her she was a vampire princess and the sole heir to the Dragomir legacy!

While some people feel that all vampire books are the same, Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side is truly an exception. Sure, Lucius Vladescu is a vampire prince charming, but the book mostly revolves around Jessica’s finding her confidence, seizing her birthright as a vampire princess, and discovering her own true royalty.

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side tells of Jessica Packwood’s senior year in which she plans to get a life despite the odds stacked against her. Beth Fantaskey brilliantly entrances readers with her writing style and fast-paced plot. The story being told from Jessica’s point of view helps the reader step into her shoes and experience her every moment.

Fantaskey also grabs readers with her characters. While Lucius Vladescu seemed perfect and dashing in every way, he is far from a knight in shining armor as Fantaskey gives even him a flaw or two. His choices are obedience or rebellion. Either he obeys the Elders and succumbs to the vicious monster they want him to be or follows his true feelings to overcome the treacherous nature that threatens those around him.

Jessica is the perfect teen heroine, and the author makes her easily accessible to all girls. Throughout the book, she transforms from a normal girl with relatively low self-confidence into the regal princess Lucius knows she can be. Jessica’s Guide helps everyday problems seem easy to overcome and can even boost the reader’s self-esteem as they, and Jessica, discover that true beauty starts with self-confidence.

Fast-paced and never boring, this book is always either funny, romantic, or action filled as Fantaskey speeds from one heart-stopping scene to the next.

Readers who frequent vampire themed books will surely notice that in each book the rules for vampires differ. In Twilight, to become a vampire one must be bitten several times and interjected with poison. Their maker then tutors the new vampire in the vampire ways. In Jessica’s Guide, however, males are born as vampires, and their fangs appear during puberty at times of high stress, while females don’t grow fangs until they’re bitten.

Fantaksey’s vampires, usually raised among their kind, don’t need to be tutored after getting their fangs; they usually already know everything they need. Otherwise, kids can ask their parents or reference a copy of Growing Up Undead: A Vampire’s Guide to Dating, Health, and Emotions.  Fantaskey’s vampires have the usual super human abilities such as strength and speed, and a few very strong ones can read minds; however, females introduced so far haven’t shown such abilities or seemed to need them even though they are undead as well.

Fantaskey has truly written one of the most perfect books in the entire ‘teen reading’ genre. The only way to improve Jessica’s Guide was to add the second book, Jessica Rules the Dark Side. Look for the review of the sequel in the next Panthers Prey.

All the students required to read over the summer

Summer is approaching, so that means summer reading. All rising 9th and 10th graders are required to read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens”, and all rising 11th and 12th graders are required to read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, both by Sean Covey.

Honors Pre-9th grade students are required to choose 2:
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling
“Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stephenson
“The Prince and the Pauper” by Mark Twain

Honors Pre-10th grade students are required to choose 2:
“Once and Future King” by T.H. White
“The Good Earth” by Pearl Buck
“Mythology” by Edith Hamilton

Honors Pre-11th grade students English are required to choose 2:
“The Unvanquished” by William Faulkner
“Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
“A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest Gaines
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt

AP Language- 11th grade students English are required to choose 2:
“Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt
“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote
Students will also read “How to Read Literature Like a Professor” by Thomas C. Foster and are required to keep a dialectical journal as they read the book.

12th grade AP English -AP Literature students are required to choose 2:
“The Mayor of Casterbridge” by Thomas Hardy
“One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey
“Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett
“The Stranger” by Albert Camus
“A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
All AP students are required to read “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Students are also required to keep a dialectical journal.