Review: Entertaining!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 26, 2013
Jessie Darker is an entertaining narrator. Her snarky sense of humor, love of all things chocolate, and Buffy-esque capabilities really made this book."Very few things in life couldn't be made better with chocolate. Well, chocolate and sharp weapons."Obviously, a kick-butt heroine after my own heart. (Plus, she has a dog. But I won't say anything more about that, because it might be considered a mild spoiler. Trust me, though, it's cute. In a slightly icky paranormal kind of way.)She's not without her flaws, though. Apparently, she's not much of a reader--as is evidenced by the "paperback growing mold at the bottom of her backpack" and the fact that she has a $50 bookstore gift card just sitting around, waiting to be offered as a bribe to demons. (I know. Who gets a book-related gift card and doesn't spend it immediately? It's just not natural.) She doesn't apply herself at school, and she frequently causes her mother--who is essentially, though not exactly, a single parent--to come up with new and creative forms of punishment for the times that Jessie neglects to exactly follow her directions.Punishments like having to deal with zombie extractions and pet possessions. If only the rest of us had options like that.Jus Accardo has created an interesting version of a paranormal world here, without getting readers bogged down in too much world-building detail. We're thrown right into Jessie's crazy world with her somewhat-skewed view of events, and not everything is minutely explained to us. (Apparently quartz has some key Otherworld butt-kicking capabilities. I am still not clear on why, but that's okay. I trust that Jessie and her mom know what they're doing. Mostly.) It's 300+ pages of wise-cracking, sin-busting, demon wrangling fun. There's chocolate. Hot guys. Zombies, demons, and Sins wrecking havoc across town.However, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to step foot in the faculty room at school again without thinking of Sloth....In a nutshell: a highly entertaining YA paranormal from a new-to-me author who I'm definitely going to read again (though I might dig out my quartz bracelet first just to be on the safe side). A solid B+ rating.