Review: Sweet Venom by Terra Lynn Childs

Author: Terra Lynn Childs

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Page Count: 345 pages, Hardcover

Date Published: September 6th 2011

Find it on Goodreads: Sweet Venom

Source:Library

Rating:  4/5

 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: Such a great book! Funny and mysterious.

I love books that deal with Greek mythology.  Anything to do with the Gods and Goddesses, count me in. So automatically I knew I was going to like this book! But I really liked it! It was light and funny, but at the same time had a mysterious edge to it and a darkness. The author did a fantastic job in alternating the point of view of the three sisters. They were all very distinct and different, and I never confused who's POV I was reading from. 

Greek myths fascinate me, and I had never read anything about Medusa until now. It was really interesting! It was obvious the author put a lot of thought into the story and did her research. We don't learn a lot about the Greek myths world in this book, but what we do learn was really interesting. The three sisters were all very different and very interesting. There's Gretchen, who is originally the only one who knows about them being descendants of Medusa, and she's a really tough, monster fighting bad-ass type. I found Gretchen to be really intriguing. We gradually find out about her childhood but there are still many questions I have about her. Then we meet Grace, who is a computer genius, tree hugger, (Go Grace!) good girl. She and Gretchen meet at a club, if I'm not mistaken and learn that they are twins, etc. I loved Grace. I really related to her and found her to be the most likeable of the three sisters. Speaking of, we don't meet Greer until the second half of the book. Now, because we meet her later, we really don't get too much from her, except for the fact that she comes from a really rich family and her parents aren't around a lot. I hope in the next book we learn a lot more about Greer, because she was extremely interesting.

Other than all the action and monster fighting, as well as the learning about being descendants of Medusa and there being something wrong with the portal from the mythological world to our world, there was a bit of romance, but what I liked was the fact that it was mysterious and didn't overshadow the larger story, which was the sisters. I thought Grace's crush on her brother's friend was really cute, and again, totally easy to relate to in some aspects. It was one of those crushes where you dress a bit nicer if you think you might see them, and your heart races whenever their name is mentioned... Something that almost all teenage girls have gone through at least once, right? Then there was Gretchen's little relationship with the guy that I can't remember his name. I found him to be very suspicious, as well as really cute. There were a lot of loose ends with him, and I'm looking forward to seeing where their relationship will go. Then there was Greer and her boyfriend, but there wasn't much to that. 

All in all, I really liked this book! The writing was good and simple, and it was a pretty quick read. I'm looking forward to reading the next book and seeing what happens with the three sisters and the mythological world! 

By the way, I have to apologize, again, for not posting this week. I've had about six hours of homework/studying every night and I don't get home until five pm, so I'm up until midnight usually. This weekend I hope to get some posts scheduled and some books read, so that I can be a bit more consistent! I feel terrible for leaving it so long, but there's really not much I can do! *Begs for forgiveness!* Anyway, if you have any tips for balancing work/school and your blog, leave them in the comments! I could use all the help I can get!

Have a great day/night!
~Kristy