The Awesome

Starred review from March 30, 2015
Raised by a monster-hunting single mother, 17-year-old Maggie Cunningham is highly trained in combat, but out of her depth when it comes to being a normal teenager. In order to graduate to hunting the fiercest creatures, including vampires, Maggie must lose her virginity. “The problem with vampires is they love virgins, and not in the biblical humpy-humpy way. They love to eat them,” Maggie explains. “Until I did the nasty with a dong of my choosing, I was a liability.” Before she can do the deed, a run-in with a vampire prince gives her strange powers and heightened senses. Blisteringly funny and unrepentantly crass, Maggie’s hard-edged narration is the soul of Maggie’s story, which thoughtfully explores her complicated relationships with her boyfriend and take-no-prisoners mother. Darrows (who wrote Mary: The Summoning as Hillary Monahan) also delivers some racy sex scenes, ectoplasmic goop and gore aplenty, and a heroine with no shortage of cunning, skill, and power. Readers eagerly anticipating the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters would do very well to read this in the meantime. Ages 15–up. Agent: Miriam Kriss, Irene Goodman Agency.

Starred review from March 1, 2015
An apprentice monster hunter will never be promoted if she doesn't get her freak on. Seventeen-year-old Maggie is training to hunt monsters. With her foulmouthed mom, Maggie travels around Massachusetts as an exterminator of things that go bump in the night-or at least those that endanger regular humans. Maggie desperately wants to become a federally registered journeyman, legally able to hunt vampires, but there's one catch: she needs to lose her virginity first. Young vampires go into a frenzy when they smell virgin blood, so Mom won't let her near a vampire until she gets herself deflowered. How is Maggie-home-schooled, unfashionable, and often covered in ecto-supposed to find what she calls The Sex? An attempt at (hilariously, depressingly) realistic drunken-party sex with a beer-swilling bro fails, leaving Maggie still vulnerable to rampaging bloodsuckers. If her mom weren't such an action-heroine badass, Maggie might have been clawed to death by a baby vamp. The killing of a frenzied vampire drags them into the precarious world of vampire politics, accompanied by the bro (who's actually quite pleasant when not swilling beer). Maggie's profanity-laced, snarky, deeply loving, yet antagonistic relationship with her mother is delightful. Maggie's adventurous baptism-by-undead provides enough complications to set up a sequel-readers will not want to wait long for it. (Fantasy. 14-18)