Two Bloggers One Book ~ My Vampire Vs. Your Werewolf

Today Barb and I have a middle grade book for you. It's the start of a series that came out this month. Once you check out what I said go on over to Barb's blog at Booker T's Channel and see what she thought.

Gabe and Hayden have a vampire. Joon and Tradd have a werewolf. And they're going to fight. After modern society pushed monsters into hiding, the Crafters Guild was An organization of humans and other creatures intent on creating community amongst these exiled beings and combating the decline in monster mental health. Their solution? A no-holds-barred clash of the titans, where two monsters can fight it out with no limits. With young coaches like Gabe, Hayden, Joon, and Tradd to guide them, the monsters must prepare for a battle that will test their strengths, smarts, and special abilities. But it's just a friendly competition-nothing could possibly go wrong…right? My Vampire vs. Your Werewolf is the first in an epic horror series from bestselling author Paul Tobin featuring all your favorite monsters--from mummies and ghosts, to dragons and zombies, and witches and warlocks--daring to answer the Who would win in a fight?

I am a huge fan of middle grade horror books and this one features two of the top monsters and so in theory this should be a great read, but for me it had a few flaws.

It's about two teams, one team is looking for a vampire and the other team is looking for a werewolf to fight each other. We are thrown into this fright from the start and we have no idea really want is going on except some nine or ten year old's are looking for creatures on their own! We find out they can control these creatures because of some medallion's that they had to find before they could go after the creature.

They are after these creatures for an epic battle between the two monsters and both monsters are very eager to fight. If you read the blurb about what is suppose to happen you will see it' mentions the monsters mental health, but I feel like we didn't really get any backstory into this and why they are all locked away, etc. 

The beginning is a bit slow till we get to about 50% into the book and they start doing a little training which doesn't really go the way the kids want. Once we get to the actual battle then it really pours on the action and gets a little spooky (for kids).

Right off the bat this book felt different than other middle grade books I have read. I read a lot of middle grade where kids are battling things and you wonder where their parents are and how adults would let them go off on their own. This just felt different. We are thrown into the story with two kids breaking into the vampires lair alone, and I felt like where are the adults! I don't normally feel this, so it has to be the writing.

Then the kids just didn't act a lot like kids. One point there was one kid who was contemplating life like she was 40 instead of 10. This author writes a lot of adult books but he also writes the Plants Vs. Zombies series so I thought he would be decent at middle grade but I think he was writing a book as if it was an adult book with middle grade characters at times. There was times when they acted like kids, when they were scared of the monsters during the battle, but far to often they felt like adults in little bodies.

Also as I sort of mentioned above you get thrown into this world where monsters are real, but they are locked away or hard to find. The only way to get a monster is if you have first found their medallion. Then you have to go to where they are known to be, as in travel to foreign lands on their own. The mental health thing, I don't feel like it was hit on enough to know why they need to fight to feel better. I don't like feeling confused right off the bat when reading. This is a series so I do hope they expand on this as the series goes on. 

I do think that if you have middle graders into monsters and they like spooky books that this would be a good one for them. Just don't expect the action or the spooky parts to be all through the book. It could be a tiny bit eerie at the beginning when getting their monsters but then nothing till the battle.

3.5 stars