Eighth Grade Bites: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer

Eighth Grade Bites: The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod by Heather Brewer
Release Date: August 16th 2007
Publisher: Dutton Children's Books
Add it: Goodreads
Overall:  ♥♥♥ 1/2
 
This book follows a 13 year old boy, Vladimir Tod, a vampire, through his first year of high school. Vlad is a human-vampire hybrid with a human mother and a vampire father. Vlad deals with the usual dilemmas in highschool like crushing on the pretty girl at school, putting up with bullies and having your aunty hide your blood fix in your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…

Vlad has to deal with a creepy subsitiute who seems to know exactly what he is. Vlad begins to discover secrets of his parent’s who died 3 years earlier  in a mysterious fire and the secret’s his father had been keeping from Vlad and his mother. Without giving away any spoilers, I love Henry, Vlad’s best friend who jsut happens to be the only human Vlad has ever bitten. Throughout the book, Vlad is figuring out his vampire powers and lives with his Aunt Nellie who hides his blood fix in twinkies (whatever they are) and sandwiches. While I think he could have just taken a normal drink bottle to school full of blood, I still love the creativity of the whole “hiding the blood capsule” thing.

Overall, this book is a first in a series so it has a few plot holes and leaves you with alot of questions as to how Grade 9 is going to be for Vlad. Vlad is refreshing and one of the best characters I’ve come across. So while the plot of this first book is a little wishy-washy, Vlad is freaking awesome and I’ll definitely be reading the next four to find out where this series is going.