Sweet Venom: Book Review and Giveaway

Sweet Venom

Tera Lynn Childs

Katherine Tegen Books
September 6th 2011
Young Adult | Paranormal

Official Blurb -

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

At first as odd as this version of mythology was playing out at least it was interesting. Even if you can barely call it Greek mythology. But with the introduction of Greer everything goes down hill. Their is just too much being introduced. Far too many unknowns. Very little foundation to stand upon. No body knows anything and none of the rules apply now. Two of the girls are dealing with some heavy and odd crush behavior. I don't like that both guys don't seem right.Then Thane being a wild card is one more to top off the list of too much. I felt like all I can claim at the end of the book is knowledge about the three girls characters. There is an inordinate amount of time spent building each character. It just doesn't feel like enough in the face of all the gaping black holes of unknown. And I am bothered by the fact that both good and bad forces are after them. Sounds like they can't trust anyone. I suspect there are two pieces of knowledge that will come back later in the story. The bit about Perseus and the human husband. So I do think this story has potential but I don't think it was developed enough before the book ends. I can predict very easily the I will forget this story amidst all my other reads between now and the next books publication. I don't think it will stand out.

I do like that this is an almost complete re-invention of the mythological story of Medusa. Will the story follow traditional Greek lines of family soap opera drama? Forbidden love, death, torture, and misery? Or will that also be re-invented to mix better with this century?

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Giveaway
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Must be 13 or older

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