Hollywood Crush › Sabrina Rojas Weiss

Dystopian Week is back at Hollywood Crush, and this time we're teaming up with our friends at The FABlife and NextMovie to fight the forces who would control our future. In that spirit, we'll be rolling out interviews, reviews and guest blogs all week, dedicated to the genre that won't stop.

"Delirium" came out early in 2011 as part of a big wave of dystopian young adult fiction, ready to feed the readers who'd read "The Hunger Games" and wanted more. But author Lauren Oliver wasn't exactly thinking in terms of the hot trend.

"I didn't actually think about it as writing a dystopian fiction," she said. "I always kind of joke about that: If you believe love is a disease, then it's utopian fiction... I tend not to think about genre at all. I get ideas and characters kind of speak to me in my head, and I just kind of pursue that idea to its natural conclusion. 'Before I Fall,' my first book, really took place in a world that is very similar to the world I grew up in. It took place in a high school that was very similar to mine. And with 'Delirium,' I obviously had to do a lot more re-conceiving of the world itself, which was exciting as a challenge."

After conceiving her whole new world, Oliver had new challenges to face when writing books two ("Pandemonium," due out in March) and three ("Requiem") of the trilogy.

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Tags Delirium, Dystopian Week, Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

One of the things that sets Becca Fitzpatrick's "Hush, Hush" trilogy apart from the YA pack is the sheer complexity of its plot. What with the angels and fallen angels and Nephilim and their descendants who all may or may not want each other dead. And poor Nora has spent the past two books ("Hush, Hush" and "Crescendo") trying to figure out where she fits in all this, not to mention whose side her bad-boy boyfriend/guardian-angel-gone-rogue Patch is on.

But the trailer for third book "Silence" simplifies things down to their essential core with this quote: "He will give up anything, do anything to protect her. Even remove her memories of him."

In the trailer, we see a feather falling into the ocean, and the same crashing waves as the book's cover. And then the camera pans over a still image of shirtless Patch, followed by another image of him with Nora, in the kind of desperate, tortured stance they've got to be pretty used to by now.

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Tags Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo, Hush Hush, Silence, Video

I don't know how many people are responsible for this, but someone—author Michelle Hodkin, publisher Simon & Schuster, all those magic elves that make books happen—is doing things right with "The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer" (out next Tuesday, September 27). First of all, that title blows me away. "Unbecoming" sounds both like someone unraveling and like a teenage girl behaving unladylike, making you all the more curious about who this Mara Dyer person is. Then there's the cover, a girl being embraced by a boy from behind, both underwater up to their eyes and photographed in dark sepia tones that bring a mood of melancholy and mystery. Is he rescuing her? Holding her down? Desperately hanging on? (Also, I love that you can't see their actual faces. Hate when covers have some model's face that then dominates my imagination when I try to picture the characters myself.)

And then, we come to the book trailer, a medium that frankly, I think is still hit-or-miss. This one is a mega-hit. And mega-HOT. "Even Stevens" vet Christy Carlson Romano does the voice-over, which is actually the letter that opens the story, as the scenes unfold, mostly in black and white. The narrator, who claims that Mara Dyer is not her real name, tells us that "a 17-year-old who likes Death Cab for Cutie was responsible for the murders," and "somewhere out there is a B student with a body count." Those words lend a creepy air to the quickly cut scenes of three girls using a Ouija board, a news ticker reporting on the death of three teens in a building collapse, a storm, Mara walking alone at night by an old building, a car heading straight for the camera and the very sexy make out session between Mara and a shirtless, broody and delicious boy. And the song that plays over it all, bringing a sense of urgency, is a driving, crescendoing rock song—not by Death Cab but by singer/songwriter Kelli Schaefer.

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Tags michelle hodkin, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, Video

This summer, we've gone to Italy, the Hamptons and not-so deserted islands. We've been on the run from angel fanatics, werewolf hunters and misguided werewolves, gone into hiding to avoid rebel vampire factions, chased after rebel armies to retrieve our kidnapped twin, found ourselves impersonating our long-lost twin and discovered our ancestral talent for witchcraft. We've even traveled back in time to Victorian Manhattan, World War II and the very recent past.

Yep, as relaxing as the idea of a Summer Beach Read is, they've actually been kind of exhausting, if you think about it. Now that fall is approaching, and with it the kind of responsibilities that eat into our escapist reading habits, we're already looking back wistfully at the books we read this summer. Did you come along for the ride? Well, which was your favorite? Vote in our poll after the jump!

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Tags Angel Burn, Beauty Queens, Bloodlines, Forever, Hourglass, Instructions for a Broken Heart, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, Nightshade, Secret Circle, Summer Beach Reads, The Luxe, The Lying Game, Witches of East End

For the last week of the summer season, and our last official Summer Beach Read, we're looking back to look forward. "The Vampire Diaries" author L.J. Smith published "The Secret Circle" in 1992, and in two weeks, the witchy tale joins "The Vampire Diaries" on The CW.

Like "TVD," the books are part of Alloy Entertainment's brilliant master plan to develop YA novels ripe for TV adaptation, and like "TVD" the show is co-created by Kevin Williamson. And also like the earlier adaptation, the plot is altered drastically for the show, but the key ingredients remain intact: a group of very relatable characters (with some very special traits) and a creepy mood designed to keep you awake at night.

We'll have plenty more on The CW's "Secret Circle," starring Britt Robertson, leading up to the September 15 premiere. But in the meantime, you can enter the slightly different world that inspired it.

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Tags L.J. Smith, Secret Circle, Summer Beach Reads, The Vampire Diaries

OK, we've given you a couple of days to finish "Bloodlines," the first book in Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy" spin-off series. And if you're like us, that last line made you throw the book across the room, scream and then rush to the internet to find out when book two is coming out. I mean, really. The lady knows how to torture us.

Maybe it's the fact that she has a baby due, literally any minute now, but Richelle gave in to our begging and consented to give us a few tiny hints about what we'll get from "The Golden Lily" when it comes out in June 2012 (aaargh!).

(SPOILER-ish ALERT if you haven't finished "Bloodlines"!)

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Tags Bloodlines, Richelle Mead, The Golden Lily, Vampire Academy

By now, most dedicated "Vampire Academy" fans have picked up their copy of the first book in Richelle Mead's spin-off series, "Bloodlines." But there are, no doubt, a bunch of readers on the fence, either because they're not "VA" addicts, or they're such addicts, they're not sure they'll be able to stomach a whole series focused on human alchemist Sydney and her dealings with other secondary "VA" characters.

We at Hollywood Crush have decided it's not our place to decide for you, even though we're going to declare "Bloodlines" our Summer Beach Read of the week. Instead, here are what other reviewers on the Web had to say about it:

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Tags Bloodlines, Richelle Mead, Summer Beach Reads, Vampire Academy

Richelle Mead feels your pain, readers. You've sucked up all six of her "Vampire Academy" books, watched Rose, Dimitri and Lissa battle for their lives and their freedom, fallen in love with this world she created. And now, in her spin-off series, "Bloodlines," which hits shelves on Tuesday, you've got to settle for seeing brief glimpses of your favorite vamps and attempt to reattach yourself to a new set of characters.

"As soon as this project was announced, and I still see these comments: 'I'm not going to read it. I only like Rose and that's it,'" Richelle told us on the phone last week. "I can relate to that. I've had that happen with authors who end a series I like and then they do a spin-off with another character and I'm like, 'Why can't we do the old ones?'

"But so often with my favorite authors I find out it's not just the characters I'm in love with, it's that style," she added, naming fantasy authors Tamora Pierce and Robin Hobb as two whose spin-offs earned her loyalty.

Of course, this spin-off isn't just asking us to get hooked on new vampires. It's focused on the Alchemists, the group of humans who have dedicated themselves to protecting the rest of our species from knowing of, or being harmed by, the "unnatural" Moroi vampires and half-human dhampirs. In "Bloodlines," all of the characters are out of their element. Lissa is now the Moroi queen, but because of a law that says she needs a living relative in order to maintain her reign, her 15-year-old half-sister Jill is in danger of assassination by rebel groups. Afraid of the implications of a vampire civil war, the Alchemists enlist Sydney to help out as Jill goes to live under cover in a boarding school in sunny Palm Springs. And lucky for "VA" fans, heartbroken playboy Adrian has come along as part of Jill's new makeshift family.

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Tags Bloodlines, Richelle Mead, Vampire Academy

Fair warning for fans of Sara Shepard's books: When you tune in to ABC Family tonight to see the premiere of "The Lying Game," you're going to notice a number of changes. Some of the characters' names are different, there's no hint of Sutton Mercer's (Alex Chando) prank-playing Lying Game and, oh, yeah, Sutton is alive and video chatting with her long-lost-identical-twin-in-foster-care, Emma, before they decide to meet up in Arizona. (The novel starts off with Sutton observing the twin she never knew from beyond the grave.) Also, randomly, Sutton lives in Phoenix instead of Tucson. But after seeing her "Pretty Little Liars" series adapted to the small screen, Sara is very relaxed about the tweaks, and she hopes readers will be too.

"The pilot is a little bit different, but I hope that those who have read the books will stick with it, because I think it's going in a really fun direction," said Sara, who has also only seen the pilot of the new series but has a little more inside info on what will happen next. "I'm so happy with 'Pretty Little Liars,' because I do think they've followed the books—they've followed the characters. A lot of the stories aren't what happened in the books, but I could totally see them being plot devices in the books. And I hope that's the way the 'Lying Game' goes too."

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Tags Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard, The Lying Game

While "Pretty Little Liars" fans are kept awake at night trying to figure out who A is, why he/she is torturing Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily, and who killed their friend Alison, ABC Family is giving us an entirely new puzzle to work out, "The Lying Game." And we know it's going to be filled with creepy plot twists, characters we'll simultaneously love and hate and a touch of romantic intrigue because it's based on another book series by "PLL" author Sara Shepard. And before you tune in to the show (which premieres on Monday, August 15, at 9 p.m), we suggest making the first two installments, "The Lying Game" and "Never Have I Ever," your Summer Beach Reads of the weekend.

With the same combination of dark mystery and wry humor as "PLL," "The Lying Game" is told from the perspective of Sutton Mercer, a popular rich girl from Arizona who just happens to be dead and somehow finds herself a hovering, unseen presence over the twin sister she never knew she had.

"I wanted to do another mystery... I wanted to do something edgy, in the same way 'Pretty Little Liars' was," Sara told us on the phone from her home in Philadelphia.

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Tags Pretty Little Liars, Sara Shepard, Summer Beach Reads, The Lying Game