I was dizzy and my stomach had started to gurgle so badly that I was reminding myself of Meg Ryan in the movie French Kiss after she ate all that cheese and had a lactose-intolerance fit. (Kevin Kline is really cute in that movie—well, for an old guy.)

What…just what is this?  What am I even looking at?  Did the author have a wordgasm all over her computer because she just loves Meg Ryan movies so much?  Why would anyone write like this? 

There’s several reasons you don’t see shit like this in quality novels.  First, anyone who hasn’t seen French Kiss is going to just sit scratching their heads.  Second, anyone who doesn’t like French Kiss is going to just roll their eyes.  Third, you can get away with just saying ‘lactose-intolerant fit’ and far more people will be able to follow.  Fourth, it’s just plain old juvenile.  Seriously, I’ve seen better writing in shitty fanfics than in this book.

And don’t give me the ‘it was written to sound like a teenager’ line, book.  ‘Sounding like a teenager’ does not have to mean the same thing as ‘sounding like a teenager’s diary.’  This is a book.  This is prose.  This is not Zoey sitting down and keeping a blog about turning into a vampyre.  Just because she sounds like a teenager does not mean the narration has to sound like it was written by a teenager.  (Conversely, this would not annoy me nearly so much if it was a blog/diary.  I mean, I’d be ticked off at the stupidity and the implication that all teens are like this, but at least it would make some degree of sense.)

Anyway, Zoey’s walking around and getting sicker and not liking the sun, but at no point does she think “damn, guess I should have waited at Grandma’s house instead of wandering all the fuck over everywhere.”

Grandma Redbird understood people. She said it was because she hadn’t lost touch with her Cherokee heritage and the tribal knowledge of the ancestral Wise Women she carried in her blood.

Yup, Magical Indian time.

Here’s something for you, book: Native Americans are people.  That’s it.  Just regular people.  They are not magical.  They don’t have a special connection to the earth or nature or whatever that gives them mystical powers.  They have their own culture and teachings and beliefs and values, but those make them no better at ‘reading people’ or what-the-fuck-ever than anyone else.  Saying that Native Americans have a mystical, innate power does two things.  First, it ‘others’ them.  It paints them as being fundamentally different from everyone else, which just makes it easier to discriminate against them.  Second, it takes power away from them.  When you say that someone’s abilities aren’t their own doing but are just handed down to them, then it’s basically turning that person into a vehicle.  Grandma Redbird isn’t better at reading people because she is just better at reading people.  She’s not observant or intelligent.  She didn’t study the matter, or do anything to pick up this talent.  It’s just something instinctual that she has no control over.

You know what else operates by instinct?  Animals. 

Fuck instinct.  Grandma Redbird is a person.  Give her the intelligence and drive that’s due to a person and leave all this ‘blood of the ancestors’ crap behind.

whenever the subject of the step-loser came up (she’s the only adult who knows I call him that).

Oh, yeah, and Zoey has been calling John ‘step-loser’ in the narration every single fucking time because apparently this book thinks that counts as clever. 

Are there any books out there that portray step-parents as good?  Not ones that are all about “hey, step-parents can be good,” but ones where there just happens to be a step-parent, and they just happen to not be the devil, and on one bats and eye at this since it should be a fucking given that most step-parents are awesome.

Grandma Redbird said that it was obvious that the Redbird Wise Woman blood had skipped over her daughter, but that was only because it had been saving up to give an extra dose of ancient Cherokee magic to me.

Fuck your magic, and fuck you for once again making the mother in a story both useless and a bad person.  Yay, misogyny. 

OMG, she’s still talking, just get where you’re going already.

Grandma told me stories of the Cherokee people and taught me the mysterious-sounding words of their language.

It’s words.  It shouldn’t sound any more mysterious than French or Spanish.  Because, fuck you, it’s just a language, because Native Americans are normal people.

(See, it even has lessons.  BECAUSE IT’S A FUCKING NORMAL LANGUAGE.  )

Blah, blah, blah, more Magical Indian stuff.  She hears magic voiced and magic drums in the magic wind and GUYS THERE’S JUST SO MUCH FUCKING MAGIC.

DID YOU GET IT YET?  THERE’S MAGIC INDIANS IN THIS.  AND THEY’RE MAGIC AND SHIT.  BECAUSE INDIANS ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND ME.  But that’s not racist, since it’s a “good” stereotype.  Because fuck racial sensitivity, that’s why.

Join us, u-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa…Join us, daughter…

Why the hyphens? 

Zoey gets the magic ghosts all around her, so she up and runs, even though she was practically dead a moment ago.  She mentions adrenaline taking over, and yeah, it can do that.  Here’s the thing, though: you pay for it later.  It’s not a free burst of energy, no harm-no foul.  It’ll fuck you up after, especially if you started off sick.  The body isn’t actually healed by adrenaline, and it still collects damage during the hormone-trip.  So her coughing and aching and gasping and general shittiness should be even worse now.

Then she trips and smacks her head on the ground, which makes her pass out.  Because as we all know, passing out from head trauma doesn’t come with any lasting consequences at all!  Amiright?

When Zoey comes to, she’s floating outside her body and heading toward the light.  YES!  RUN TOWARD THAT LIGHT, BRAT!  END THIS BOOK EARLY!

I’m going to heaven. Well, that’ll shock some people.

Psh, for all you know, that’s the gentle glow of brimstone and hellfire.

Actually, instead of being afraid it was more like I was an observer, as if none of this could really touch me. (Kinda like those girls who have sex with everyone and think that they’re not going to get pregnant or a really nasty STD that eats your brains and stuff. Well, we’ll see in ten years, won’t we?)

Oh, look, slut-shaming!  How nice.  I wasn’t missing you.  Here, I’ll play the game, too:  Kinda like those brats who run away from home thinking nothing bad will ever happen to them, because they’re just so special, so there’s no way they can wind up on the wrong side of a gang or a pimp or just an unscrupulous con-artist.  Well, we’ll see in a lot less than ten years, won’t we?

Damnit, this book has nearly pushed me to the point of just chucking condoms at a high school and shouting “I BELIEVE IN YOU!  GO HAVE FUN!”  You know, for a bit of variety.

Well, my body was breathing like that, not the I that was me. (Talk about confusing pronoun usage.)

Have I mentioned yet how much I hate these parentheses?  Because I really fucking hate them.  Every one could be taken out and make the book better.  Well, less-bad, at least.  If the pronoun use is confusing, author, then use different words.  “My body was breath, not my soul/spirit/self.”  Or whatever.

I/she was all pale and her lips were blue. Hey! White face, blue lips, and red blood! Am I patriotic or what?

Please just finish dying, already.  Why is this being dragged out?

This doesn’t sound like a teenager anymore.  It doesn’t.  It sounds like it was written by a teenager.  Do you know what the difference is?  This sounds like a teen who is sitting safe at home in her bed, cackling to herself about how she’s so clever, while actually making no effort whatesoever to make a believable character.  It does not sound like a teen who is facing down her own imminent death.  No part of this book has sounded like a teen who is actually living through these events.  It sounds like a teen who is observing these events and snarking at them.  And that, in turn, doesn’t make the characters sound age-appropriate.  It makes the author sound incredibly immature and lazy.

Wow! Who knew hitting my head and passing out would be so much fun? I wondered if this was what it was like to be high.

Encourage self-harm and drug use while you’re at it!  Good job, author.  I can only assume you’re intending to fail on every possible front, so congratulations, you’re succeeding.

So, even though Zoey’s body is currently bleeding heavily, Zoey has no fucks to give and instead follows her grandmother’s magic-voice down into some rocks, where she discovers a cave.  There, she doesn’t find her grandmother.  Instead she finds some spirit/goddess and goes ahead to hammer the final nail into the Magical Indian coffin.

You are a unique mixture of the Old Ways and the New World—of ancient tribal blood and the heartbeat of outsiders.

Because…the Cherokee haven’t been intermarrying with white people for hundreds of years?  Seriously, why is Zoey special?  She’s not even the first in her own family, she’s…like, fourth, I think.  Grandma isn’t full-blood Cherokee, I don’t think.

So this woman is Nyx, and the book has decided that goddesses from different religions that share the same purpose are all the same.  Even though, frankly, most ‘night goddesses’ are actually pretty fucking different from each other.  Some are mothers, some are destroyers, some are tricksters, some are male.

Not to mention, oh yeah, THE CHEROKEE DO NO HAVE A NIGHT GODDESS.  Nyx mentions that one of her names is ‘Changing Woman’, but not only does that have nothing to do with night (Changing Woman is more of an earth/mother spirit), it’s also a NAVAJO legend. 

Remember how Native Americans are people?  Well, Native American Nations are nations.  As in, not all the fucking same, each having different legends and traditions and cultures. 

So, apparently Zoey has a destiny, but she doesn’t want it because destinies are hard.  To be fair, yeah, they are.  I wouldn’t want one either.  But, no, Zoey is going to be super-duper special because she’s a mix of Magic Indian and…well, just fucking magic.  Because, you know, all those other half- or part-Native American’s before Zoey…uh, just weren’t special enough to count, so all they got was a life of confused cultural identities and (to varying degrees through history) ridicule and racism from both sides of the family.

I’m actually at a bit of a loss for ways in which this could possibly get any more insulting, short of making Grandmother a half-naked drunk or flat-out saying that Native Americans aren’t real people.

She just smiled serenely. You are old beyond your years, Zoeybird.

Uh, no, she’s an immature brat who can’t even figure out that pedophile jokes are insensitive.

Then Nyx kisses her forehead, and Zoey passes out again.  Is it possible for a spirit to pass out?

Why can’t we just get to the school already so I can whine about bad worldbuilding and sundry plot problems instead of all this insanity?