Review: Dead is a Killer Tune By Marlene Perez (Dead is series#7)

Title: Dead is A Killer Tune (Dead is series #7)

Author: Marlene Perez

Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Paranormal

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books

Synopsis/Summary: A diabolical pied piper comes to town in the the seventh installment of this hot paranormal mystery series. High school freshman Jessica Walsh is a virago, a woman warrior who must protect her hometown from danger. And in the unusual little town of Nightshade, California, trouble is always lurking. At Nightshade’s Battle of the Bands, Jess’s boyfriend Dominic and his band Side Effects May Vary are up against Hamlin, a band so popular that their fans follow them everywhere. Soon, Nightshade’s musicians are doing risky, illegal and even fatal things—and claiming that strange music they heard right before falling asleep told them to do it. Could a diabolical pied piper be sabotaging the Battle of the Bands? It’s up to Jessica and her friends track down the tuneful tyrant.

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    I think the Dead is series is one of the most under-appreciated series in YA. The books in this series are so great, they are short yet packed with mysteries, there are so many sub-plots that I must applaud Perez for stuffing them all in then resolving them in about 200 pages. Well done! Perez! *insert enthusiastic clapping here* As you can see, this is the 7th book of the series, but don't worry, Perez doesn't drag her plots, each installment actually has its own story, with the same characters of course. From book one to book five we have Daisy as our protagonist, and from book six onwards we have Jessica as the protagonist.

    Dead is a Killer Tune is another great installment to the Dead is series. Like I said, this book is packed with mysteries. And it's fast-paced. Within the first five chapters, we already have several plots set up and ready to go. The writing itself is crisp and direct, though there are not much development to the characters, I still enjoyed it. Dialogues are an important part of the book, there are many dialogues and they actually pushed the story forward. The plot itself is sometimes messy, what with so many sub-plots, but not necessarily confusing, it's easy to pick up a sub-plot even if it had been neglected for some chapters. The mysteries itself is not hard to figure out, so there are not really some knock-your-socks-off plot twists, but I enjoyed them just fine, I usually enjoyed plot twists a lot and demand big plot twists in a book, but Perez casted her magic on me and I love this book so much that I don't care really about the plot twist, I just wanna keep reading. There is also some romance in this book, it's sweet but very slow-burning, and it lacks kisses at times, so don't your hopes up for a steamy romance in this book ;)

    The book is set in Nightshade, a town in Cali. But don't get it wrong, there is no sun bathing and beach party in this book, there is only weirdness. Seriously, the town is just weird, weird visitors, paranormals, murders, you name it, Nightshade seems to have it. And I love this town. Somehow murders didn't seem like a really big deal and had a great impact on people and the town, and people didn't really react when they see paranormal occurrences, but it's like the understatement for this town, it's plain weird. Everything seems to happen in here too. It seems like an exciting town to live in but I would have to become psychic if I want to move in :P

    The town provided the perfect setting for the story, since everything happens in Nightshade, you can't really blame anyone when the plot takes a weird turn, you just have to deal with Nightshade being weird and get on with it.

    Characters are a big weakness of the series.

    Since the book is very short, we actually don't get to see the emotionally struggles the protagonist goes through after dramatic events, we don't really know much about them either. I find Jessica to be hard to connect to sometimes, she doesn't seem really confident in herself in this book but in the 6th book (which is the first book to feature Jessica), she said she's ready to be popular/queen bee at high school (freshmen here). So, is she confident? Or is she just another ordinary teenager? She can't really be the queen bee if she don't even view herself as queen bee material, it's just contradictory.

    In fact, the characteristics of other characters changes a lot and doesn't make sense too. Selena was supposed to be a little love sick and gorgeous witch (don't worry, she's in high school, not the old women kind of witch), but in this she has gotten a lot meaner. It's just weird. Is that even Selena? The characteristics are all wrong! Selena is a more extreme case, but you can imagine, characters in this series actually come back with different characteristics... Not a good move here, Perez.

 (I finally uploaded the header for conclusions! Yay for me!)

    I would give this book 4 stars. I would have given a higher rating if the character settings are better, but other than that, this book is very good. It's a fast-paced novel filled with several strange, mysterious and creative plots, and sometimes offers a little humor too. The book reads like a MG book, right until there are murders, but don't worry, there are no graphic details about the murders so I think this book is good for younger YA readers looking for a quick read. It doesn't matter whether you're a paranormal fan or not, the book is intriguing! I hope this series will get more hype like the other famous books out there though, it's definitely worth fan-girling for ;)

Rating: 4 stars!

This book is such a quick read, I finished it within two hours! Do you have any favorite quick reads? What are they? Tell me in the comments below, I would love to look for quick reads to fix my reading rants! ;)

P.S. Sorry the review is a day late, I am having a very busy week at school and I just read several pretty crappy e-books therefore completely killing my reading mood, good thing Dead is a Killer Tune cured my short reading rant! ;)