Review: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Today I am reviewing Tera Lynn Childs’ newest release Sweet Venom, which is the first in a the Medusa Girls trilogy.

Title: Sweet Venom

Series: Medusa Girls #1

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9780062001818

Author: Tera Lynn Childs

Description: Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

My thoughts:

- The cover: This cover is simply gorgeous.  The way the girl’s hair swirls at the end reminds me of the way Medusa’s hair would have looked (if it wasn’t snakes).  Under the dust jacket the title is foiled in blue so it’s shiny and gorgeous and I really just can’t get enough of this cover.  I carry around a Sweet Venom bookmark in every book I read so that I always have the cover art with me. :)

- The characters: The story is told from three points of view with alternating chapters of the three sisters descended from the gorgon Medusa; Gretchen, Grace, and Greer.  I absolutely love the way Tera weaves the girls’ story together seamlessly.  Gretchen is the tough girl that is so closed off to socializing with others and I love her for it.  She’s almost socially awkward, but not in a sad sense, more in a “she’s a complicated person, you wouldn’t understand” type way (if that makes any sense to anyone other than me).  Grace is the eco-friendly girl who has a loving and supportive family.  I love Grace, I feel like if I ever met her I wouldn’t be able to help myself from hugging her because she’s so cute.  Greer has to be my favorite of the three sisters though.  Greer is the “snobby” rich girl who has the perfect life from the outside looking in, but of course, isn’t the upperclass witch she comes off to be.  I always love these types of characters and I can’t figure out why because I can’t relate to them at all, but I guess they’re just the most fun to dissect because there’s always more to them than meets the eye.  (In this case, there’s more to each of these girls than meets the eye though).

- The story: This is the first in a trilogy so it sets up the way the rest of the trilogy will play out.  Sweet Venom gives a background of each sister, then slowly weaves their story into how they meet and get to know each other.  All the while though, there is enough action to keep the story interesting so it’s not just a “this is a starter book to the series” type of story.  I laughed at loud many times reading this book, I don’t know if it was always at the most appropriate times to be laughing at the characters’ actions, but I found myself smiling, and giggling throughout the book.  Parts of the story were a little predictable but other areas were more like “holy crap where did that just come from?!”  

- Overall:  I am in love.  I cannot wait until Fall 2012 for Sweet Shadows to release.  I was in awe when I closed the book and I believe my tweet went something along the lines of “O.O < my face right now.  Sweet Venom = Epic awesomeness” and that was literally the only words I could use to describe the book for a couple days because it was so good.  The ending is the perfect cliffhanger to leave you needing more of the story in your life.  This, like Tera’s other series, has landed a spot on my “re-read over and over” list because I will be reading this book again and again.

Overall Rating: 

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Right now I’m reading Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi and can’t put it down, look out for the review of this book next weekend!