This blog is only about a month old, and already I’m starting to slack. I haven’t had the time to prepare anything of my own to post (I guess that comes with being a scientist by day, aspiring smut writer by night), but for now here is another book review.
I enjoyed the second House of Night book, Betrayed, much more than the first. The first one was entertaining, but it had to set everything up so it didn’t exactly pull me in. But Betrayed had a lot more action in, and the Casts weren’t afraid to push their characters in new directions. You start seeing characters you hated in Marked in a different light, and characters you loved turn out to have a more sinister side. I love it when authors can blur the boundary between good/evil, instead of having clear sets of heroes and villains. Although the House of Night books aren’t quite there yet, the Casts start to play with this in the sequel.
I don’t want to summarize the book too much because it always ends up sounding like the pitch on the back of the book, but I will say that Betrayed is part paranormal romance, part murder mystery. Human teenaged boys are winding up dead, their blood sucked dry. They are also all boys that Zoey has some connection to. The unresolved subplot from Marked becomes one of the main focuses in Betrayed: Zoey finds out the truth about the “ghosts” of the supposedly dead vampyre fledglings. Through clues revealed through the first person narration that Zoey doesn’t even quite understand, the reader connects the dots faster than she does.
You’ll either love or hate how the Casts try to distort your opinion of Aphrodite. Ok, I’m going to make another Harry Potter comparison…Aphrodite reminds me of the female Draco Malfoy, and not just because they’re both blonde. Like Malfoy, Aphrodite has affluent, control-freak parents, and although she has some moments of brief redemption, she’s basically mean and weak. I wonder how much this will change as the series progresses.
Also, Betrayed is waaaaay sexier than Marked. Zoey has THREE young men in her life: vampyre fledgling/actor Erik Night, her human ex Heath, and now Loren, vampyre Poet Laureate and part-time professor. Although Zoey is only 16, not gonna lie, the Loren and Zoey subplot was my favorite. He’s everything you could want in a book crush: Mysterious, sexy…yeah, basically those. But I kept switching back and forth between Team Loren and Team Heath. Since Heath is a human, he and Zoey have that forbidden-love thing going on. Although Erik Night sounds like the perfect boyfriend, his character is too bland for me to really root for him.
So, in general it was an excellent read. However, there’s still something missing from this series that I can’t put my finger on. I guess I’ll just call it the “epic” quality. The books don’t have that epic feel to them that some authors are able to create.
Anyway, I’m taking a break from this series to finally read the 50 Shades trilogy…almost done with the first one.
slstacy.com 