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Yzabel / August 9, 2015

Review: The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl

The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 2 by Ishbelle Bee

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

A dark and twisted Victorian melodrama, like Alice in Wonderland goes to Hell, from the author of The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath.

Two orphans, Pedrock and Boo Boo, are sent to live in the sinister village of Darkwound. There they meet and befriend the magical and dangerous Mr Loveheart and his neighbour, Professor Hummingbird, a recluse who collects rare butterflies. Little do they know that Professor Hummingbird has attracted the wrath of a demon named Mr Angelcakes.

One night, Mr Angelcakes visits Boo Boo and carves a butterfly onto her back. Boo Boo starts to metamorphose into a butterfly/human hybrid, and is kidnapped by Professor Hummingbird. When Mr Loveheart attempts to rescue her with the aid of Detective White and Constable Walnut, they too are turned into butterflies.

Caught between Professor Hummingbird and the demon Angelcakes, Loveheart finds himself entangled in a web much wider and darker than he could have imagined, and a plot that leads him right to the Prime Minister and even Queen Victoria herself…

Review:

[I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Like the first novel in this series, I had trouble rating this one. Some aspects I really found delightful, while others left me cold.

I loved the “mad” characters’ narratives—Loveheart’s and Heap’s. The way they tell of the events from their point of view, their disjointed thoughts, the apparently random use of capital letters, how they go about killing or maiming while wishing for custard and pursuing so many different musings, all these quite nicely reflected the fact they were all but human. Heap made for a glorious villain, while Loveheart was his lovely psychopathic self. I couldn’t help cheering for him, even though he was basically just as much a monster as his nemesis. Only he didn’t kill on such a large scale. Or did he? With him, you can never tell.

I also liked seeing White and Walnut back in action. They made for a funny duo, from their fumbling steps with the cursed jewel that sent them to Wales, to how they always ended up in dire straits due to being somewhat silly. In other circumstances, I’d file them as Too Stupid To Live; however, the tone here being clearly humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it left room for that, and it was alright.

On the other hand, a lot of the other characters were either quickly dispatched or barely etched, and very little development happened in that regard (though Mrs Charm and her medieval horror novels were amusing—I’d definitely read those if they existed, I mean, come on, “The Cannibal Bishop of Edinburgh” is a winning title, isn’t it?). I would’ve wanted Boo Boo, more specifically, to be more fleshed, as she was an intriguing girl, considering how and where she was brought up.

The action felt disjointed in some parts, which was fitting when it came to Loveheart, but caused the story to be stuck at times on killing and severed heads flying in the room, but little else. The ending dragged a little, too, the very last chapter opening towards a third novel, yet the ones in between taking maybe just wee bit too long to close up the remaining characters’ storylines.

Overall, a somewhat over-the-top novel that manages to make light of dark situations, with a charming twist of language, even though its rhythm itself was uneven. 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 3, 2015

Review: Way Down Dark

Way Down Dark: Australia Book 1 by James Smythe

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

There’s one truth on Australia.

You fight or you die.

Usually both.

Imagine a nightmare from which there is no escape.

Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

This is a hell where no one can hide.

The only life that Chan’s ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

This is a ship of death, of murderers and cults and gangs.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness – a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

This is Australia.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery – a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Life on the Australia spaceship is hard: the Earth is gone, only handfuls of survivors were sent on such ships through space, in the hopes that someday they’d find a new place to live… but aren’t these travellers way too entrenched in destructive ways to even reach that someday? This is what I found deeply intriguing and nagging in this novel: a strong dichotomy between the goal, the Promised Earth, and how the ship’s people were getting to it. Telling myths and stories about their origins… yet living almost day to day only, as if not hoping in anything else anymore. Some of them taking care of their arboretum and their few other sources of goods… yet others bent on destroying, conquering, killing, razing down whatever they could, just because they could. Trying to survive by scrapping out metal and other bits of the ship. And all the while, those colonists remained trapped in their own microcosm, unable—or unwilling—to do more than that, their world torn between various gangs.

This is when you know that the society Chan’s living in is completly upside down, and that something has gone terribly wrong. And the twist, although there are several hints and it’s not so difficult to guess, pretty much fits.

Chan was a likeable enough protagonist: headstrong, wanting to help others, but not immune to bits of selfishness and cowardice, as she was trying to keep her promise to her mother (“don’t die”). Not a perfect girl, not a special girl, but one who knew from the beginning she wasn’t a special snowflake and that her only way of ensuring her survival was to bank on her mother’s reputation and make it her own, using tricks and carefulness. The choices she made could’ve been made by many, many people: can you decide who to save when you do have some power (fighting…), only it’s obvious you’ll just never have enough? However naive some of her choices seemed to be, Chan tried to do what she felt was right by her fellow dwellers on the ship. She had a nice balance of good and bad sides, bringing humanity into chaos and madness. She could easily have let herself become a Rex, but she really tried not to. And she didn’t spend most of the story swooning over some guy(s), which is always a nice change.

I liked the violent, brutal society depicted here, even though as far as world building goes, it was stretched rather thin. However, this was partly justified by how many decades, centuries had passed since the ship had left Earth: history decayed into gritty myth, and without much guidance, the minds of the people themselves started “decaying” as well. Though it may be seen as simplistic, it was also logical, all things considered, and was a good way of illustrating how narrow the world of the survivors had become.

On the other hand, the pacing of the story was a really problematic element for me. While it was necessary to illustrate how harsh life was on the Australia, the various events in Chan’s life became redundant: be careful, try to work, barter, climb the gantries, escape the Lows, hide, climb up and down, hide some more, fight, get wounded, hide again, fight and get wounded again… After a while, it felt like filling between the strong starting point (Riadne’s death) and the “big reveal”—and in a book that isn’t so long, it’s kind of annoying. This is why I’m not giving it a full 4 stars.

The end, too, brings closure to this first part of the trilogy (yay), but its cliffhanger was annoying nonetheless.

A pleasant read, one that kept me coming back to it, and that I liked overall. In the long run, I don’t know if it’s going to be that much more original than a lot of other dystopian YA stories out there. The ending seems to open towards something very different… or maybe not so? We’ll see, we’ll see.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 25, 2015

Review: Tortured Life

Tortured Life by Dan Watters

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Richard is having a bad year. He’s lost his job, lost his girlfriend, put on weight… and developed the ability to see the deaths of everyone around him. Plagued by horrific premonitions, he decides to end it all, but there are old and powerful forces at work that have their own plans for his power. Pitched into a world of eldritch horror that lurks just beneath the surface of London’s civilized veneer, the only chance Richard has of finding peace is to unravel the mysteries of his own past. He’s having a really, really bad year.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A harsh but fascinating story about Richard, a young man who’s able to see how people around him will die. It starts with animals, then expands to everybody he meets, ending up in him retreating from the world and the horrors he keeps seeing. Until the day he meets Alice, and crosses path with the Bloodyman, leaving a trail of dead people behind him.

This comic book weaves several themes, not only death and the ability to see it; scientific experiments are one of those, and while this may seem like an odd mix at first, the plot manages to gather them all up in a way that actually makes sense. It is terrifying and bittersweet; bringing slivers of hope, only to have them smothered by more despair and helplessness. Richard struggles to understand what’s happening to him, yet every time a bit is unveiled, something or someone else is taken from him, until only the dead remain. The dead, and truth.

I also liked that the beginning doesn’t dwell too long on what Richard’s life had been before: just enough to see what he lost, and how he then started losing himself, before everything starts going down the drain for good.

Although the artwork is sometimes stiff, it still definitely conveys all the gruesomness of death, murder, dismembered bodies and rotting guts. The Bloodyman is creepy as hell, humming tunes as he goes about killing again and again, clearly methodical in the madness he’s lost himself in long ago. The bittersweet ending may or may not be a good thing; personally, I quite liked it, as I wasn’t sure what other outcome could have sprung out of this story (at least, a totally happy ending didn’t seem fitting).

3.5 stars, rounded to 4.

Yzabel / July 2, 2015

Review: Black-Eyed Susans

Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A girl’s memory lost in a field of wildflowers.
A killer still spreading seeds.

At seventeen, Tessa became famous for being the only surviving victim of a vicious serial killer. Her testimony put him on death row. Decades later, a mother herself, she receives a message from a monster who should be in prison. Now, as the execution date rapidly approaches, Tessa is forced to confront a chilling possibility: Did she help convict the wrong man?

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

4 stars. This is the first time I read anything by this author, and I admit that when I picked it among my ever-growing pile of ARCs to read, I didn’t even really remember what it was about. Which was probably for the best, as comparisons with other authors (such as often seen in blurbs) sometimes affect me in a negative way. You know, the “this is the next X”, or “X meets Y in this breathtaking novel.” So I was able, for once, to approach a story without remembering that. And it was good.

The novel deals with Tessa, the victim of a serial-killer, who survived and managed to send her would-be murderer to jail, where he’s waiting for the death penalty to be applied. Years later, now a mother with a bubbly, cheerful daughter of her own—a daughter who’s as carefree as the pre-killer Tessa—she is still haunted by those memories, or rather by the lack thereof: no matter what, she still can’t remember everything from her ordeal, and what she remembers of it may or may not be the truth. Moreover, Tessa’s starting to have second-thoughts: what if the man about to die was an innocent, and the real psychopath still out there?

“Black-Eyed Susans” deals with several interesting themes: psychologic and physical trauma (Tessa after the “event”), lies (what was told and untold when it came to the trial), forgiveness (the man on death row), fear (being potentially stalked by the actual killer, or even seeing him target the daughter)… There are very likeable characters, like Charlie, and others who sow constant doubts as to their loyalty and real intentions. There came a moment when it was difficult to tell what was only in Tessa’s mind, what was triggered by other people’s delusions, and what may have been actual happenings—although I still managed to narrow down my suspicions regarding to the killer to two, then one person relatively soon.

This book also has two things I really like: an unreliable narrator, and a narrative switching from present to past to present again. While the latter can be a deal-breaker for some readers, I personally like that technique. It made it tricky to determine where were the turning points, while at the same time giving hints. Some of those were just a tad bit heavy-handed, but… Overall I liked the story overall no matter what.

Yzabel / June 5, 2015

Review: The Euthanist

The Euthanist by Alex Dolan

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:
They know her as Kali. She is there to see them off into the afterlife with kindness, with efficiency, and with two needles. She’s been a part of the right-to-die movement for years, an integral member, complicit in the deaths of twenty-seven men and women, all suffering from terminal illnesses. And she just helped the wrong patient.

Leland Moon has been with the Bureau for his entire career, but even as a respected agent, he was unable to keep his own son from being kidnapped on his way to school. When his boy finally came home, he told terrifying stories of his captors, and his nightmares haven’t stopped since.

Moon draws Kali into his mission, a mesmerizing cat-and-mouse game with two ruthless predators—one behind bars, one free—who hold the secrets that could bring comfort to the families of their victims. This powerful journey towards grace and towards peace will force both Leland and Kali to question everything they believe to be true and just.

Review:

(I was given a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

One thing I’d like to say: blurbs, please stop spoiling the plot. Because, you see, when the main character learns of something only 50% in the book, and it’s presented as a reveal, the reader having known for so long somewhat deflates it. Which is too bad.

Overall, this was an interesting story, one that made me keep reading, but to be honest, I found the blurb was more exciting than what it turned out to be. I didn’t feel the urgency that much, and the two predators didn’t come off as so ruthless in the end: we know how dangerous they used to be because of what other characters and newspapers said about them, but since they’re not seen directly in action, their deeds appeared once removed, and the impact on me wasn’t the same. I didn’t feel the immediacy.

Mostly what I had a hard time with was Kali herself. While she’s strong in a physical way, the mistakes she made were those of an amateur, not expected from someone who’s been disguising herself and evading the law for years in order to give the good death to her clients. It’s as if she had never really contemplated the possibility of getting caught (contrary to her mentor, whom she knew had made preparations), and once caught, every decision was illogical: running to other people and thus endangering them, using her real name when pretending to be someone she wasn’t… In general: not being paranoid enough. Even I know that the first thing you do when on the run is to ditch your mobile phone, especially when you know you’ve remained unconscious for several hours with a manipulative bastard who could have made just any plans in order to follow you later.

Leland was infuriating, but in a way that still made me want to get to know him better, at least. He meant business, even though this involved lying and behaving harshly.

I did like the themes of trauma (due to kidnapping, more specifically) that the novel wove, the way different people reacted to it (one became sort of a recluse, another let her story out to exorcise her fears), and the person with a strong desire for revenge realised that this hadn’t to be the main goal. Leland’s second trade, while manipulative, of course, also allowed him to get an insight he probably hadn’t expected within a world that he seemed to see previously as black and white only.

I guess that makes it a 2.5 stars: there were definitely twists and turns that made me want to know what would come next–it is a page-turner–but the main character was just too annoying, and her mistakes kept distracting me.

Yzabel / May 23, 2015

Review: The Devil’s Detective

The Devil’s Detective: A Novel by Simon Kurt Unsworth

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Welcome to hell…

…where skinless demons patrol the lakes and the waves of Limbo wash against the outer walls, while the souls of the Damned float on their surface, waiting to be collected.

When an unidentified, brutalised body is discovered, the case is assigned to Thomas Fool, one of Hell’s detectives, known as ‘Information Men’. But how do you investigate a murder where death is commonplace and everyone is guilty of something?

Review:

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

First thing first: if you’re looking for nice things, Happy Ever Afters and something else than bleak prospects, this is not the book for you. But the fact it’s set in Hell, only in Hell and nowhere else, makes this fact kind of obvious anyway.

Thomas Fool is one of Hell’s few “Information Men”, meant to investigate crimes yet knowing that whatever the outcome, it won’t matter. Whether murderers get punished or not doesn’t matter, whether people die or not doesn’t matter—it’s Hell, and it’s nonsense, and the whole nonsense of it bears down upon every inhabitant, even the demons themselves. There are rules to follow, and all of Hell’s prisoners do, in the flimsy hope of being Elevated someday, freed and sent to Heaven, following a process of selection whose rules themselves are all but logical. Joy and hope? Of course there is: so that they can be better quashed.

It was sometimes a little difficult to make up my mind about this novel, as some of its defects also contribute to making its strengths. The characters in general are sort of bleak, unremarkable, lost within an investigation that doesn’t really seem important, like puppets stringed around while being totally aware of what they are. It was somewhat tedious at times, yet it fit pretty well into the Hell setting, into its “why bother” atmosphere. I would not necessarily care for what happened to whom, yet at the same time, I did, because it reinforced the feeling of a twisted structure here. (I was peeved however at the women’s roles: they were either absent/in the background or clearly too stupid to live anyway.)

Hell’s descriptions were vivid and made it easy to picture what Fool and his partners had to go through, as gruesome and malevolent as both places and inhabitants were. In the beginning, I expected more; later, it didn’t feel so important, as what was described became enough for me to form my own vision of Hell, and adding more would’ve actually been too much.

Dialogues were definitely of the weak sort, especially because of the various repetitions and name-dropping. For instance, one character kept calling Fool “Thomas” several times in the span of a few sentences only, and this happened more than just once of twice. Fool’s and some others’ lines were also often reduced to “Yes” or “No”, and those became quickly annoying.

Another issue: guessing who the perp was. Way, way too easy. It made sense fairly early in the novel, and it was equally annoying to see Fool & Co not doing the math. Granted, their investigations often fell into the “Did Not Investigate” category (Hell made it so that it was pointless for them to investigate most crimes in general), and I guess one could say they weren’t “used” to doing it, but… It was still annoying when Fool openly admitted to himself not understanding something that should’ve been obvious.

2.5 stars for the depiction of Hell, and how the story made clear that pointlessness, twisted logices and bleak surroundings can be turned into something as terrible as fiery pits and physical pain. The reader doesn’t get hammered with God and Satan, and has to make their own idea of whether this would truly be a kind of Hell for them. As an investigation/mystery type of story, though, or in terms of interesting characters, it didn’t work well.

Yzabel / April 2, 2015

Review: The Well

The Well by Catherine Chanter

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

‘One summer was all it took before our dream started to curl at the edges and stain like picked primroses. One night is enough to swallow a lifetime of lives.’

When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London in their grime-encrusted car and view The Well, they are enchanted by a jewel of a place, a farm that appears to offer everything the family are searching for. An opportunity for Ruth. An escape for Mark. A home for their grandson Lucien.

But The Well’s unique glory comes at a terrible price. The locals suspect foul play in its verdant fields and drooping fruit trees, and Ruth becomes increasingly isolated as she struggles to explain why her land flourishes whilst her neighbours’ produce withers and dies. Fearful of envious locals and suspicious of those who seem to be offering help, Ruth is less and less sure who she can trust.

As The Well envelops them, Ruth’s paradise becomes a prison, Mark’s dream a recurring nightmare, and Lucien’s playground a grave.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Another one for which I can’t decide on a rating. Because I did like it, but I wasn’t awed, and I was torn between moments of beautiful writing, and moments when said writing seemed to be here just to delay the outcome. The feeling was definitely weird.

I liked the tense, oppressive atmosphere of The Well: a place that looked like some kind of Promised Land in the middle of the Waste Land, yet also a tainted paradise, one that could only bring the sterility of death. I liked the contrast between the emphasis placed on a “land for women”, which could hint at more promises of life, but in the end, it was all a lie, and only ended with said life being stifled and denied the right to exist. As a container for such themes, this novel was good. Maybe not the most subtle piece of work in that regard, but good nonetheless.

I was less thrilled by the way it kept hesitating between what it wanted to be: a murder mystery, or a supernatural story? I wished for more information about the drought and about the mysterious quality of The Well. Was why that place so “blessed”? What made it exceptional? The blurb led me to expect some preternatural explanation, something that would have justified the way the Ardinglys were rejected almost like witches of old—by this, I mean an explanation more complex than jealousy and people wanting what they couldn’t have. It begged for a revelation that I never got, focusing instead on the mystery/murder aspect. I would have had less trouble with that if it had taken a definite stance regarding Ruth’s story of an isolated woman who doubts herself and seeks for a frightening truth: that story didn’t need the backdrop of a drought and miraculous land to be told. The Rose of Jericho, Ruth’s love life coming apart at the seams, Lucien’s story… Those could stand on their own.

The mystery highlighted all the doubts and shortcomings of human psyche. The charges against Mark in the beginning, how they contributed to add a “what if…” side to his character, poisoning other people’s minds against him, including that of his own wife. The Sisters, led by Amelia, the cult that got hold of Ruth’s mind. Angie, not the perfect mother, yet the loving one all the same, who had her faults but still tried to get better, only to have to face a “what if” of her own when it came to her son.

However, I found it too easy to guess who had committed the crime, and the way Ruth descended into her delusions seemed just a tad bit far-fetched. Maybe her isolation, getting estranged from her husband, could be a valid explanation; or maybe not. She didn’t strike me at first as someone who would fall so easily into the clutches of a cult. Still, this is part of the novel’s ambiguity: who can tell what kind of person is a “ready-made victim”? Nobody can. Sometimes you just can’t suspect at all, you never see it coming.

What was somewhat annoying, as said above, was how the novel beat around the bush. On the one hand, there were really beautiful, poetic moments, vivid descriptions that made The Well come alive, with its good sides and with its faults. On the other hand, I clearly had the feeling at times that the author was delaying, only to lead to revelations that weren’t so striking all in all. In my opinion, the book could have benefitted from more editing and shortening here.

I’d rate this a 3 to 3.5 stars (depending on the scale used). Overall, I liked it, though I’m not sure I’d read it again.

Yzabel / September 19, 2014

Review: Amity

Amity by Micol Ostow

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

For fans of Stephen King and American Horror Story, a gruesome thriller suggested by the events of the Amityville Horror.

Inspired by a true-crime story of supernatural happenings and gory murders, Amity spans two generations and beyond to weave an overlapping, interconnected tale of terror, insanity, danger, and death.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I watched the Amityville movie some 20 years ago, and never read the book, so I won’t comment much on how faithful to the original story this novel is… or how it diverged from it. I remember some elements (the red room, characters always waking up at the same time, the door banging, the “healer” character being thwarted…), and I think they were used in ways both similar and different. Is it a good or a bad thing? I don’t know. For me, it felt appropriate, at least. I tend to like cameos, winks at other works of literature, and so one.

I liked how both narrators’ voices were clearly distinct, not only because of the fonts used, but simply because their tone, their ways of thinking, were different enough. Gwen is more fragile, while Connor’s instability is expressed more violently. Gwen is more intuitive, and Connor “colder”. In fact, his case was pretty easy to figure out, and his narrative reflected his problems fairly well.

This said, while I enjoyed the setting, the writing itself unfortunately got on my nerves to such an extent that it ruined my reading experience. Why? Too much hammering, too much repetitions (she was shot in the head, I mean, you know, go away crazy, I mean, she was shot in the head, she was shot IN THE HEAD). I get why they were here, emphasising Gwen’s unstable mental state and Connor’s sociopathic tendencies, but I have an aversion to heavy-handed writing styles, the ones that tell me what I should feel, instead of subtly hinting at it. Apart from the standard sentences (see above), often the story made a point of repeating the same event several times, as if to flash a huge neon sign above it, in case someone would have missed it. Example:

My mother stood in the doorway of the sewing room.
My mother stood, head cocked slightly, looking quizzical, in the doorway of the sewing room.
She wasn’t directly behind me[…]
She hadn’t been behind me at all.
She’d been standing in the doorway of the sewing room.
My mother had been standing, not behind me, but in the doorway of the sewing room.
She’d been standing in the doorway of the sewing room this whole time.

Frankly, this doesn’t induce fear in me. This just makes me cringe and roll my eyes, thinking, “OK, I GET IT.” I don’t like being openly manipulated. Suspension of disbelief, for me, rests on a text’s ability to make me forget the ropes, so that I end up realising that I’ve been led all the way without realising it. Conversely, I don’t react well to techniques that poke me without subtlety in the right direction. It’s like someone’s grabbing my head, looking at me in the eyes and screaming: “Look, this is scary! I’m repeating it because you’re meant to feel it! Are you scared yet, Huh? HUH?” As said, I get why such effects were used, Gwen and Connor being damaged characters. But the way they were handled just irked me. Sometimes, it happens. And it’s too bad.

The novel also borrows from a few other works (notably “Carrie”, for the stones), and I don’t think that was a good idea. It came out of nowhere as far as Gwen was concerned, and though it had its use, it just felt like a cop-out to me. And not frightening either. Mostly, I didn’t find this novel scary. It lacked subtlety to achieve that, and the last chapters were too muddled to give it a proper ending.

I had high hopes for this story, and I wish I had liked it, but alas, this didn’t come to pass. 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / June 13, 2014

Review: Crushed (Soul Eaters 2)

Crushed by Eliza Crewe

My rating: [rating=5]

Summary:

Meda Melange has officially hung up her monstrous mantle and planted her feet firmly on the holy and righteous path of a Crusader-in-training. Or, at least, she’s willing to give it a shot. It helps that the Crusaders are the only thing standing between her and the demon hordes who want her dead.

The problem is, the only people less convinced than Meda of her new-found role as Good Girl are the very Crusaders she’s trying to join. So when a devilishly handsome half-demon boy offers escape, how’s a girl supposed to say “no?”

After all, everyone knows a good girl’s greatest weakness is a bad boy.

Review:

(I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

4.5 stars, rounded to 5 because this book did something other books seldom do: eliciting feelings in me.

You see, I’m a cold-hearted person. Not as in cruel and mean, but as in, someone who very seldom cries, who’s seldom moved by emotional scenes, and so on. The few things that make me reach such a state aren’t the usual kind of triggers; I don’t shed tears over characters dying, romantic scenes, happy-ever-after moments. In fact, it’s so random I couldn’t even explain what may or may not trigger a reaction, whatever reaction, in me.

Meda’s voice does. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s her acceptance that she’s bad, that something in her is utterly rotten (she’s half-demon, after all). Perhaps it’s the fact she doesn’t delude herself when it comes to being liked by others, or to the guy she may or may not fall in love with. Perhaps it’s how she feels she tries hard, but realises in the end that she should also have tried to understand others. She’s not perfect, she knows it, she’s not trying to be—just being “good enough” would already be a great step, but can someone who needs to ear souls ever be “good enough”? Her eating the souls of bad guys only could seem a rationalisation… or simply a fact: when the only other solution is starving yourself, how many of us would actually be “good enough” to do that? So she goes after bad guys—psychopathic killers, child molesters—and eat their souls, because it’s the least of two evils, yet while she jokes about being a super heroine, going about vigilante business, she still acknowledges that she’s part monster, and will always be.

She’s not perfect. She makes mistakes. She misunderstands people, people misunderstand her. But she learns. She accepts facts in the end, seeing them for what they were, for something she failed to notice. She owns up to her mistakes, tries to correct them, takes responsibility for her actions. And she’s also angry and frustrated, so much that I could feel her anger poring through the pages. I especially liked that contrary to a lot of teens in YA fiction, her reasons were both selfish (it was about “me, me, me” at first, in that she saw things from her side of the barrier only) and understandable: the bullying, people automatically disliking her at school because she’s a half-demon, the adults seemingly turning a blind eye on it, humiliating punishments that only furthered the bullying… She was under scrutiny because of her nature, but it felt as if she was expected to do better than any other “good” person in the world, while being set up for failure. (I don’t know, but if someone’s half-demon, expecting them to be Mother Teresa is kind of asking for them to fail, isn’t it?) Meda was self-centered and didn’t understand Jo’s attempts at warning her, at protecting her; however, I think a lot of people would’ve felt the same in her situation. And later, when she discovers the true reasons behind what happened, she accepts them, accepts that she has to understand.

Meda’s friendship with Jo: another beautiful thing in this story. They both have their own very special personalities, they’ve been through fire together, they don’t entirely trust each other, and paradoxically, the latter grounds their relationship into something deeper, stronger, because it holds one important promise: the day real trust is born, is the day their friendship knows no bounds. In the meantime, they’re kidn of circling each other, watching each other. It’s not a girly kind of friendship. They don’t bond over boys, over one common interest that may or may not last. But it runs deep, to the point of self-sacrifice… not only on Jo’s part (knowing her character, that must’ve been one hard thing to do for Jo, by the way).

And when a half-demon is led to self-sacrifice, this also tells you something about her, about whether her nature binds her so much, whether Armand is right in telling her Hell is the only place for her… or not. Meda knowing she’s a monster, and not refuting it, Meda teetering on the brink of that one important decision (join the demons or remain faithful to the Crusaders, even though they want her dead), are, in my opinion, what could make her achieve her own “goodness”: not a saintly one, but one that defies her origins.

Love interest: there is one, but not too much. Here, we don’t go through the “redeem the bad boy” trope, or starry-eyed love. While Meda and Armand are clearly attracted to each other, they also know that sooner or later, they may stand on different sides. Meda is aware she may have to kill him someday; indeed, no delusions here, and no glorious promises of Love Eternal either. They both hang out together for their own selfish reasons, they both say it openly, they both accept it in each other. It’s a really nice break from the usual teen romance I see in YA books nowadays.

Also, they kill. They go through with their murders, they don’t bail out at the last moment. Another nice break from all the “assassins who fail to kill” stories.

The Crusaders: horrible in many ways, justified in others. What they did to Meda, refusing to give her a say when it was time to test one specific kind of magic on her, was shocking; however, when Meda had a choice, the person who seemed so bad, so cruel at first turned out to be pretty decent—and he wasn’t the only one. It’s never sp black and white with them as you think it is.

The one qualm I have with this book is that it felt slow in the beginning, especially compared to the first novel in the series. Meda’s voice and what I could sense between the lines prevented this from being too much of a problem, but I was still glad when the pace picked up.