Musical Chairs

Musical Chairs

Marla Braziel

Teen, Vampires

47 pages

Teen

Warnings: Violence, mentions of murder, mentions of sex

   Annabell is a vampire attending night school in order to seek out her next kill. She befriends Aiden in an attempt very to find the best rating victim through his friends.

Writing Style: 5/10

   Most of the characters were very two dimensional to me. Annabell was interesting with her hunt, but Aiden and his girlfriend are very standish, not letting you know anything. Students best friend, Bane mentions family problems at home. Bane himself had potential, but was only in the story briefly. The most interesting character, an athlete named Mark, was brutalized by Annabell early in the story and avoided her for the rest. Mainly, this story us internalized by Annabell and lets no one else develop.

Plot: 7/10

   Annabell's quest to find a delicious high schooler for her once yearly underaged kill is interesting, especially with the night school. How she goes about it, finding a target and devoting every minute to trying to get their trust so she can betray them is interesting. The plot is fairly loose otherwise and sort of focuses on her finding her target.

Originality: 5/10

   The market is so swamped with stories on vampires at this point that it's hard for any of them to be original. Still, the night school is a nice addition that I had yet to see and the intense focus on finding a target and not worrying about being popular or falling in love was a nice change if pace. This isn't to say that no one wants to be with Annabell, Mark got himself hurt by being too forward and Bane was also very interested in her, she just had no interest in the boys.

Enjoyability: 6/10

   The story wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. So little time was spent on Annabell truly interacting with other characters that it really took away from the story and made me yearn to have someone show up that would have a full conversation with her.

End: 6/10

   This is a novella and has for other parts and I took that into account, but the end was still awkward. I feel as though it should have ended more where Annabell determined her target, as that seemed to be the focus  of the novella.

Overall: 29/50

Musical Chairs can be gotten from Amazon or her own page.

Visit Marla Braziel's website.

What are your thoughts on Musical Chairs? Any other readers out there?