Review: Prom Dates from Hell, by Rosemary Clement-Moore

I recently finished this one, a fun little story about a high school journalist who crosses paths with jocks, cheerleaders, and demons.

Prom Dates from Hell, by Rosemary Clement-Moore

First, a couple of confessions about me and this book:

Confession #1: I am very much not the target audience for this book. It’s young adult with a female protagonist. I am neither young nor female.

Confession #2: I have a bit of a fan-boy crush on the author. I have met her at various conventions, and she’s a great panelist: quick on her feet and very clever.

As for the book, I had a lot of fun with it. It’s written first person, and the protagonist has much of the same witty snark as the author has demonstrated, and while the supernatural aspects are clearly not autobiographical, some of the high school drama rings so true as to have come from real life. While I was not a yearbook geek in high school, I was a band geek, and all the insane jock and cheerleader drama brings back a lot of memories. It’s not that they’re necessarily memories I’d rather forget, but they remind me how much better life gets once you’re out of high school.

(As an aside on that, I think it was Wil Wheaton who once told a bunch of high school geeks that once high school was over, they would never have to deal with any of their classmates ever again if they didn’t want to. Wise words.)

I don’t want to say too much about the story, but as the much-dreaded prom approaches, things start getting spookier and spookier. Someone has revenge on their mind, and they’ve got a surprisingly cruel way to get it. Only Maggie Quinn has a chance to stop it.

So check it out. I’ve already slipped it into my wife’s in-pile, and I’m considering the sequel, “Hell Week”.