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Fake Blood

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By DeeDee

Fake Blood
by Whitney Gardner
Simon & Schuster, 2018. Comics. 332 p.
In this new graphic novel AJ has a crush on a girl who is obsessed with vampires. When they get put together on a history project about Transylvania, he decides to pretend to be a vampire to impress her. Little does he know that she is not a "Bella" but a "Buffy."  AJ fnds himself desperately trying to convince her that he isn't really a vampire, while discovering that another he knows may not be faking it. Gardner has fun with a lot of vampire tropes, especially those found in the Twilight series.  She adds in a cute relationship between AJ and his older sister, and between his two best friends who are always competing against each other.  I wouldn't call the illustrations awesome, but they convey the awkward junior high social drama believably enough.  This is a good choice for boys or girls who like Telgemeier's graphic novels.
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