It’s Supernatural meets Veronica Mars in Lili St. Crow’s new young adult novel Strange Angels. Straight away our scrappy heroine, Dru Anderson, hears some odd tapping noises at her back door. Surprise! Dad’s been turned into a zombie. Fortunately Dru is channeling bizarre Allison DuBois like psychic abilities and her grandmother and father (before he became reanimated) both schooled her thoroughly in the art of things that go bump in the night. Even so what she has to do in this scenario is every daughter’s worst nightmare.

It goes from bad to worse quickly and unfortunately Dru just can’t catch a break. Her new friend Graves lets her crash in his swinging hidden bachelor pad at the mall but then they get attacked by “wulfen” and Graves is bitten. Thankfully he’s a virgin though so legend has it he wont be turned into a freaky fury fiend.

I’m not entirely sure I understand the difference between “wulfen” and “werewolves” so if someone wants to enlighten me feel free. In the novel vampires are also referred to as “suckers” which feels awfully offensive to me for some reason, but at least the vampires are properly vicious and don’t sparkle.

After some gun wielding, a great escape, and a little research Dru and Graves make contact with a mysterious vampire-not-a-vampire named Christophe, who is appropriately dreamy and well heeled, but is he on their side or just leading them astray? I’ll never tell…

Some parts of this novel felt a bit too much like other popular media in the supernatural category, but it’s well paced for the book to develop into a series. I’m intrigued enough to want to read the next novel, Betrayals, scheduled to be released this Fall (especially since we’re left with a cliffhanger ending) in hopes of unraveling some of the many hanging plot points surrounding Dru’s family and the other mysterious beings who are introduced.

By the way, thanks to that nasty zombie at the beginning of the book, I had three separate zombie nightmares last night. Miss St. Crow I think this means that all in all you did your job.