Ira Bloom

Literary Merit: Okay
Characterization: Okay
Recommended: Not recommended
Reading Level: Grades 9-12

"Hearts & Other Body Parts" tells the story of three sister witches, Esme, Veronica, and Katy, attending high school. When Norm moves to town he is impossible to ignore, being abnormally tall and composed of multiple different body parts. Enter Zach, a vampire, who "mesmerizes" all of the girls to fall head-over-heels in love for him just to be led back to his mansion for he and his Master to feed on.

This book had promise in opening chapters regarding the retelling of Frankenstein's monster and vampires through a medical-condition lens, but lacked in depth and substance overall. Particularly off-putting were the hints at sexist stereotypes ("his sheer strength was an immediate turn-on"). There is a lot of back-and-forth hexing and cursing among the sisters in a battle over Zach which came off as very superficial. Although the vocabulary used was decent, inappropriate use of commas and overuse of the same words became a distraction and detracted from the merit of this work.… (meer)