Sweet Peril by Wendy Higgins - Review

Anna Whitt, the daughter of a guardian angel and a demon, promised herself she’d never do the work of her father—polluting souls. She’d been naive to make such a vow. She’d been naive about a lot of things. 
Haunted by demon whisperers, Anna does whatever she can to survive, even if it means embracing her dark side and earning an unwanted reputation as her school’s party girl. Her life has never looked more bleak. And all the while there’s Kaidan Rowe, son of the Duke of Lust, plaguing her heart and mind.

When an unexpected lost message from the angels surfaces, Anna finds herself traveling the globe with Kopano, son of Wrath, in an attempt to gain support of fellow Nephilim and give them hope for the first time. It soon becomes clear that whatever freedoms Anna and the rest of the Neph are hoping to win will not be gained without a fight. Until then, Anna and Kaidan must put aside the issues between them, overcome the steamiest of temptations yet, and face the ultimate question: is loving someone worth risking their life?

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I'm just going to dive straight in with this one!

It picks up about six months after Sweet Evil ended. Kai is still AWOL, but now Anna has a reputation as the party girl of the school - meaning she's working. She tries to be good about it, she really does, but in the end all of her pretending kind of becomes the truth. And she hates herself for it. Add to that her missing Kaidan and you get a pretty depressed Anna.

So, when Kaidan comes blowing into town (or near enough) with his band, you can imagine Anna's determination to see him. Kai, of course, acts equal parts hot and infuriating, something we've all come to expect by now! ;)

This is all slowly building up to the moment when we get our first real taste of PLOT! Anna gets visited by the spirit/soul/angel/consciousness-thingy of a certain someone and all gets revealed. (And by all I mean the prophecy that only Anna can fulfill.) 

So then, Anna spends the rest of the book gearing up for the big showdown that's going to happen in book three. PLOT kind of takes over here, a symptom of classic Sequel Syndrome (which means no, erm, distracting Kai for about two-hundred pages!). This, however, was not a particularly bad thing, because a lot of development took place over the course of these pages that is essential to the storyline.

We see way more of Kaidan towards the end. I'm going to call this section of the novel the Relationship Progression Stage. Then you have a super tense ending that will lead in perfectly to the third book. 

WHAT I LIKED:

• Anna is no longer that "sweet little Southern girl", yet she still manages to retain her essence, her sense of self. I liked that character development and it was necessary to strengthen her character.
• Kaiden. Seriously, how can you not love Kaidan? He is the bad boy with a heart - and he's in a band.
• Okay, just characters in general then. Some surprised me, others (surprisingly) held true to their nature. But they were all relatable and you could understand why they did the things they did.
• The Relationship Progression Stage. I liked this part!
• I liked the book in general.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE SO MUCH:

• As I said before, this book had a case of Sequel Syndrome. That's when the author pulls out the cliches of sequels in general: prophecies, super-plot, lets-skim-over-that tactics, more focus on politics than action, the heroine going off to "find herself" or hone her new-found powers, you get the idea. The thing about cliches though, the reason people use them, is this: They work. And they worked for this novel, just like they worked for the last three-hundred, and just like they will work for the next.  These cliches were used sparingly and well applied (Go Wendy!) For that, I can ignore the little things.
• It didn't hold my attention. I know, I know, there is a 94.281% chance that it was just me, but I got stuck about halfway through for awhile and just wasn't pushed to continue. I made myself though, and once I got past the "lull" in the middle, I found myself fully immersed in Anna's story once more.

This took a lot of consideration, but I'm going to give this book:

Three hats! This is a series worth reading.

Of Poseidon by Anna Banks - Review

PREMISE

Galen is the prince of the Syrena, sent to land to find a girl he's heard can communicate with fish. Emma is on vacation at the beach. When she runs into Galen — literally, ouch! — both teens sense a connection. But it will take several encounters, including a deadly one with a shark, for Galen to be convinced of Emma's gifts. Now, if he can only convince Emma that she holds the key to his kingdom . . . 

Told from both Emma and Galen's points of view, here is a fish-out-of-water story that sparkles with intrigue, humor, and waves of romance.

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This book was actually pretty good. It starts when Emma runs (literally) into this handsome guy on the beach and they are both all "Ooh, damn you is hot!". As things turn out, he's the prince of the Syrena (mer-people) and thinks that she is one of his subjects on the run. Of course, she doesn't have a clue about any of this, and it doesn't help matters when said prince keeps getting distracted by her pretty face and the shocking heat they feel when they touch...

In addition to believing she is a secret mermaid, he thinks she has the long lost "Gift of Poseidon". (It let's her talk to the fishies, basically.) This would make her a mermaid princess of his arch enemy and....political scheming ensues. He takes on the responsibility to keep an eye on her (which is no hardship, really. He does think she's hot.) Then PLOT happens and everything goes BAM!

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It was good and well paced, with some romance thrown in for good measure. There was also a surprising amount of plot (in a good way!) and some twists that I, for once, did not see coming. However, it was chock full of grammatical mistakes and it kept alternating points of view. One chapter would be written in Emma's POV and the next in Galen's, but Emma's would be written in the first person and Galen's would be written in the third. After awhile it gave me a headache.

It was, in many ways, a typical YA read: light, romantic, mysterious and fun. It would be a great book to bring to the beach and I enjoyed it enough to read a sequel. I give it:
 Three hats. The mermaid's made it magical.