Haint Misbehavin' by Maureen Hardegree

Title: Haint Misbehavin' (Ghost Handlers #1)

Author: Maureen Hardegree

Publisher: Bell Bridge Books

Release Date: June 1, 2010

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Sisters. Boys. School. She has enough trouble to deal with. Then the first ghost showed up. Life just got supernatural for Heather Tildy.

Heather's Ghost Handling Rules

- Even if you're really old, like fourteen, and you just got your period, imaginary friends ARE ghosts. Don't let anyone tell you different.

- Ghosts don't always want to move on. They like to hang out with you. And they're not, like, always hunky and dreamy like the Jonas Brothers or Justin Beiber or whoever.

- If a ghost wants to, she or he can jump inside your body. Which is seriously weird.

- A ghost handler's job is to help the ghost resolve something that is keeping him/her in this limbo between worlds. It's like being stuck in the mall on a Monday.

- Ghosts sometimes are here to help you learn something, too, but they don't just, like, tell you. They make you figure it out.

-If the ghost does two nice things for you, the ghost can go wherever you go totally without your permission. Can you say super-duper sucks? 

I received Haint Misbehavin’ from the publisher along with another book I had agreed to review. I wasn’t expecting this book but I’m really glad I got it because it turned out to be quite a fun read. Ghost stories often tend to be fun stories and this one followed the trend. The story was fun, the characters were fun, the premise was fun, pretty much everything about Haint Misbehavin’ was fun.

Heather has been waiting for a long time for her period to come, but when it finally does it brings along a surprise. That surprise goes by the name of Amy and died in 1920. See the problem here? Heather has always been told that her Aunt Geneva has a ghost friend but she never actually believed it. Until now. Now Heather has to deal with Amy on top of getting her older sister Audrey to like her and make Drew the hot lifeguard to notice her. And of course there are all those hypersensitivity issues to manage. Now the real question for Heather is, can she get Amy to move on her way before she heads off to the beach for the family vacation?

Heather reminded me of my 14-year-old self, minus the whole ghost thing. She has all these problems that I remember having not so long ago. She was a fun character and I loved her humor and how she dealt with everything. Though how she treated some people kind of annoyed me but it wasn’t that big of a deal in the long run. Despite how much she complained, she seemed to just take everything in stride and no matter what would try to make the best out of the situation. Amy amused me. There is just something about a 10-year-old ghost who lived close to 100 years ago that can’t help but make me laugh. She always picked what she thought was the best moment to act, which of course tended to be the worst moment for Heather. But despite it all, she was a as good a friend as a ghost can be. In the long run her story is sad but how it all ended got me a little teary eyed.

Ghost stories are always a lot of fun but for some reason I always tend to forget and and remember it all once I start reading again. This happened again with this book. Ghost stories, at least the ones I read, don’t tend to carry the same heaviness as other paranormal books and in that sense they are great to read in between two heavier books. Haint Misbehavin’ was a great read and reminded me of Meg Cabot’s Mediator series which I absolutely loved. Both have the same light, fun playfulness and are really enjoyable reads.

Haint Misbehavin’ was a great fun and light read that reminded me of how great ghost stories can be. If you have read and enjoyed the Mediator series by Meg Cabot I definitely recommend you give Haint Misbehavin’ a try.

What I Learned From Being a Cheerleader by Adrianne Ambrose

Title: What I Learned From Being a Cheerleader

Author: Adrianne Ambrose

Publisher: Bell Bridge Books

Release Date: July 1, 2010

Source: From Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Eleven-year-old Elaine Rewitzer is funny, smart and happy being a geek, but when she wins a spot on the Cross Creek Middle School Buccaneers cheerleading squad, she gets totally into her new life. Her mega-brain best friend Bethany warns that Elaine will just become “part of the herd,” and her best geek-guy-pal, Tim, (who’s struggling with nose polyps) feels forgotten.

Will Elaine survive the roller coaster of the pre-teen cheerleader fame? Will she win the heart of the cutest boy on the basketball team? Will she confess her “uncool” love for comic books? Will she lose Bethany and Tim’s friendship for-evah?

Until I received an e-mail from Adrianne Ambrose asking me if I would review her book I had never really considered reviewing Middle Grade books. It’s not that I have anything against them, I guess I just forgot about them over the years. Now that I’ve read What I Learned From Being a Cheerleader I remember why I used to love these books. They are so much fun to read and everything always works out for everyone in the end.

Elaine wants to be a cheerleader but doesn’t want to tell her friends that she plans on trying out for the squad. They probably wouldn’t understand and would just make fun of her for wanting to try out. But then she actually becomes a cheerleader and all her hopes of becoming popular and finally talking to Todd Watson, the cutest boy on the basketball team, seem to be about to come true. But as it turns out, becoming a cheerleader doesn’t guarantee immediate popularity and she can’t admit to any of her new friends that she’s really into comic books because they would just think that she’s a total geek. When everything was supposed to be so good for Elaine things end up going from bad to worse.

I remember being eleven years old and being just like Elaine. I even had a diary and wrote just about everything in it. Even though I’m close to being ten years older than that now, I can still relate to Elaine. At least, the eleven-year-old in me totally did. Adrianne Ambrose really got what it feels like to be eleven years old and wanting to be popular. To me, Elaine was really realistic and I could easily have pictured my younger self in her place. Despite what people say about your high school years being tough middle school is just as hard. You’re only starting to be interested in certain things (boys) but still don’t want to let go of the things that made you happy when you were a little younger (like go trick-or-treating). A lot of middle school girls probably feel just like Elaine does in the book.

The story was really cute as well. It’s one of those books where you know everyone is going to live happily forever after but you still insist on reading it just because of how good it makes you feel. Reading the book, I just wanted to go back to middle school where everything was just so much easier even if at the time it seemed like I would never make it through alive. Half the time I could picture myself, as I was when in was eleven, in the story or just thinking “Oh I remember when this and that used to seem like the biggest problem I could have.” It was really fun to go back to that time through the story.

What I Learned From Being a Cheerleader was a great story. It reminded me of how much I used to love all those Middle Grade books and that I should really go back to reading them from time to time. I wish I could pass on this book to people of that age I know, but most of them are boys and I doubt many of them would want to read about a cheerleader, even if Elaine is a total comic book geek.