Review: Sweet Venom

Title:  Sweet Venom
Series:  Medusa Girls #1
Author:  Tera Lynn Childs
Publisher:  HarperCollins
Pages:  384
Format:  Hardcover
Source:  ARCycling (From Montana at The Book Belles!  Thank you ^.^)

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 Review:  I've had my eye on this one for a really long time.  I love Greek mythology and this sounded like it had such a unique, fun twist on a well known tale.  However, I was a little wary because of the multiple points of view.  I generally have a hard time connecting with and liking the main characters when there is so many different voices I need to learn and get comfortable with.  Luckily, I didn't have a problem with this one.  Each girl had a different voice and I never found myself confused as to whose point of view I was reading from.  I actually found myself enjoying hopping from one girl's chapters to another.

I fell right into this book from page one.  We got a glimpse at what kind of world they were living in and how they deal with it.  There was a lot of adventure and I enjoyed seeing the girls work together to figure out what exactly was going on and how they were going to fix it.

I think my favorite of the three sisters was Grace.  She was very easy for me to relate to and I was happy to have her in the story.  Greer and Gretchen have such wild personalities that it was hard to not get annoyed with them sometimes, especially when they were bantering with each other.  I appreciated that way that Grace stayed focused on their goals and didn't let hard feelings or mixed emotions get in the way of what she was working to.  Gretchen was a good character, though.  She was tough and willing to work for what she believed to be what was best.  My only problem with her was that she was sometimes way too stubborn for my liking.  I got so frustrated at times with her!  Greer . . . well, she was a major bit of a snob when we first met her.  I really did not like her at all.  She soon redeemed herself though and I'm excited to learn more about her in the coming books.

On to the boys:  I really enjoyed the guys in this novel.  I found Nick (who I'm going to say is Gretchen's love interest) really interesting.  His banter and the way he so easily got under Gretchen's skin had me laughing out loud.  I wish we had learned more about him but I'm hoping we get the opprotunity to do so in the next book.  Thane (Grace's adopted brother) was another mystery.  I feel like he is somehow a part of this whole Greek Myth bit and I really want to learn more about him.  Milo (Grace's love interest) was such a sweet guy.  I can tell he really cares for Grace.  I'm hoping he developes a little more as a character in the next book because there wasn't really anything very remarkable or unique about him.

The only big complaint I had with this book was the ending.  It felt so rushed.  I really had no idea what was going on for the last three pages and had to go back and reread to make sure I didn't skip pages or anything.  It was exciting but I wish that it would have been developed a bit more. 

Sweet Venom was a fun read with a lot of Greek mythology.  I enjoyed reading about it and really loved seeing how different the three girls were - in both voice and personality.  I'm eager to continue the series and see what happens next.  

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