Lynne Ewing

There were parts of this I loved, namely Jimena conducting a car-jacking, Collin and Serena being the best siblings ever, and the hint that Serena will choose "darkness" in the end. But boy oh boy do I get sick of these kids. It's a combination of miscommunication (or no communication) and flip-flop, flippy, flip-flop behavior that drives me nuts. You are either with Stanton or against him, make up your minds! All of the girls are so immature in their dealings with Stanton's whole slave to an evil entity situation that I was forced to remember that this man is grown, like 700 years grown. What is he doing around all these kids?!… (más)

Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.
Another DNF in my favorite childhood series re-read. This one introduces a new teen goddess to the mix and she isn't very likeable. One of my favorite things about all of the other girls in this series is that they always prioritize their friends and their "work" over the guys they're interested in. In this book, as soon as Michael shows up Tianna is completely thrown off course from what she's in the middle of doing. It happens again and again. She has murderers after her and is the only person who can communicate with a missing girl stuck in another dimension. I got about 60% of the way through when she's in the middle of talking to the only people who seem to know anything about these two massive problems she has, Michael shows up and she literally starts dancing with him instead of continuing the life saving convo she was in the middle of. She has a lot of other unlikeable traits, but this was where I gave up and skim-read the rest so I wouldn't be lost for the next book.

The next books focus on characters I know and love, so I'm hoping this is just a mid-series slump.… (más)

Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
This was my first DNF on the reread of this series. I don't remember how I felt about this book in particular when I read it as a young teen, but as an adult reader it was both boring and annoying. This is where we get an insider look at the big bad Atrox and its Followers. There's an interesting, kind of pervy seduction immortal, hundreds of years old Standon plays on a fourteen year old girl, but aside from that, this evil bunch doesn't seem to do much other than go to clubs and squat at abandoned houses. It's very boring. Halfway through the book, the goddesses show up and I found their attitudes about Stanton's evilness so incredibly immature that it was annoying. Again, a teenager might not find these girls immature, but I did and reading them having these overblown reactions to an immortal being who's been evil for hundreds of years resorting to evil deeds in order to solve problems is so...teenager-y. They all lacked empathy.

When I was a teenager, I stopped reading the series at Book 10, so I'm hoping the next few will be better. After getting through half of this novel, I read the last few chapters of it to get ready for the next one.… (más)

This was such a turnaround from the last two books in the series, which I ended up not finishing and skim reading. In Moon Demon, we're back to Vanessa who started out the series. When I was a young reader, Vanessa was my second favorite character. But during this reread, she's become my favorite. In Moon Demon, Vanessa is feeling neglected by her friends and stifled by her good-girl reputation. She meets an alluring young man, Hector, at a place where girls can make a few bucks by dancing with men. And it kicks off this whole drama. The romance between Vanessa and Hector is hot and exciting, even though you know how it's going to end. Michael is still in the picture, so there's a bit of a triangle. Stanton shows up as a dark aide. And basically we're just waiting to find out how bad Vanessa is finally gonna let herself be. The book is super page-turny, though the ending let me down a bit. The villain in this book was a refreshing opponent in that all of the goddesses skills were useless against him. He was a formidable opponent. But the way he was defeated was really anticlimactic. Also, out of all the romantic leads in this book and the series, Michael is the most boring and he's been presented as Vanessa's endgame from the start. So the romantic conclusion to this book was definitely meh. Overall though, this book was a very pleasant return to form and has me looking forward to continuing the series.… (más)