Betrayals

by Lili St. Crow

This book is the sequel to Strange Angels, a book whose story I enjoyed but I had some reservations over the method of telling.

I have largely the same complaints for the sequel.

Again, Lili St. Crow seems to have a small vocabulary when it comes to words to expresses anger or shock. The only ones she can think of would get bleeped out on cable television. This is frustrating because these aren't words I enjoy hearing - even in my own head, and also because I think it shows a real lack of creativity. Seriously, not EVERYONE in the world uses those words in every sentence. It's crude, and sounds uneducated. I realize these are teenage characters, but I have a hard time believing that all teenagers have such a foul mouth as Dru and Graves do.

Second - the smells! Ms. St. Crow focuses way too much on the way things smell and not enough on other senses. Many sequences are hard to understand and picture in your head because the only information you have is what things smell like. (And yes, Christophe STILL smells like apple pie!) Oh, and by the way, it's mentioned quite a few times that Graves smells like cigarette smoke, as if this is supposed to be a nice thing - um, ew!

Unfortunately, I'm giving this book one less star than it's predecessor. I just didn't find the story as interesting, and it was often confusing! There were a few chapters that I wasn't really sure what was going on and it felt like the author was being intentionally vague.

Will I read the third installment? Probably only if Dani assures me that it's better than this one!