Sweet Venom
Author - Tera Lynn Childs
Genre - YA/Paranormal
Pages - 345
Description From Goodreads
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.
With the current zombie/steampunk/dystopia craze its nice
to go back to mythology and revisit some of the old stories and lore. Or in
Childs case, remake the lore we know and love.
What if Medusa was not the evil snake headed – turn –you
– to –stone monster that we have come to know? What if instead, she was a
guardian. A warrior who kept the bad beasties in their own realm and out of
ours? What if she had children with a human lover and those children became
warriors like her and kept the beasts at bay generation to generation? Then you
would have a great premise and interesting story that is Sweet Venom.
We start off with Gretchen, a self assured, tough best
slayer who lives with her mentor Ursula, however Ursula has gone missing,
untroubled Gretchen continues slaying beasts (one a night) and keeping up with
school work, as is her norm for the past 4 years. Enter Grace, an eco-geek
(like me!) who loves computers, science and the new boy her adoptive brother
Thane has become friends with. However, one night at a club Grace sees
something.. monstrous, and not just one. Its there that Grace meets Gretchen,
and finds out of her own heroic legacy and that the rules are changing, now
beasts can come in pairs or more through the gate that holds them in their
realm.
Pretty soon they also meet Greer, the pompous rich girl
who denies her lineage. That does not
last for long. Now monsters are coming in droves and they are all after one
thing, the three girls (more specifically just one or all since there is a
bounty on their heads).
It was a bit slow in the beginning, but quickly picked
up. Gretchen and Greer were annoying at first and I took to Grace immediately.
After a while though they all grew on me, since both Gretchen and Greer grow up
in the last few chapters. There are still many mystery’s to be explained in the
next book. Like, where did Thane go? Who
is Nick? And who is trying to kill the girls? I eagerly await the next book,
the action and suspense is surprisingly very real and the end was a real
cliffhanger!