Review: I really wish I could have liked it more, but in the end, this just wasn’t my cup of tea.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 11 14, 2013
Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales.Quick & Dirty: Trapped in Hell, not living and not dead, Kirsty discovers that her aunt up in the Mortal Coil is in danger. What’s an undead girl to do? It’s time to go back to school – Reaper school that is – and save her aunt before it’s too late!Opening Sentence: Dante hugged me hard.The Review:This is going to be a hard review for me to write. I absolutely hate writing negative reviews, but if I’m being honest, this book really didn’t do anything for me.This is the second book in The Reluctant Reaper series. This book starts immediately after the first one ends. Kirsty has just lost her court case. She has one chance to appeal. If she loses that as well, she’s stuck in Hell forever. While that wouldn’t be all bad because of her newfound friends and boyfriend, Dante, Kirsty wants the life that was stolen from her. Once she’s lived the years she’s due, she’ll gladly come back and live out her afterlife in Hell.Conrad – the guy responsible for Kirsty being in Hell – has other plans. Kirsty discovers he’s planning to do to her aunt the same thing he did to Kirsty so that he can stay alive. Kirsty will not let that happen, so she enrolls in Reaper school so she can earn her own scythe to use to drag Conrad to Hell. Will she be able to graduate in time?I honestly wasn’t a huge fan of Kirsty. She struck me as being very self-centered, not taking into consideration whether her actions would have a negative effect on others. Going hand in hand with that was the fact that she seemed really immature. I was shocked when I realized she was 26. She seems much younger.I didn’t really get to see enough of Dante to form an opinion on him. He’s on the sidelines for most of the book. He seems like a good guy, and I thought it was cool that he was the Dante (of Dante’s Inferno fame). Other than that, I couldn’t really form an impression of him.I think my biggest problem was that it felt like the book was trying too hard to be funny. This really served to disrupt the flow of the plot for me, and I found myself rolling my eyes more often than laughing. An example of this would be Kirsty referring to a character as having an emotion “written all over their face” and then say, “No, not literally.” It just really threw me out of the action.As I said before, this is the second book in a series. While I for the most part had no trouble following what was happening, I still feel it would be best to read The Reluctant Reaper first, mainly in order to meet characters who Kirsty mentions in book 2, but doesn’t give us back story on. I really wish I could have liked it more, but in the end, this just wasn’t my cup of tea.FTC Advisory: Pocket Books provided me with a copy of Scythe Does Matter. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.