The Devil You Know, Jenna Black
okay, so i just finished this one. i keep reading other reviews insisting this one is better, but to me, they were roughly the same in regard to plot, character, and everything else i complained about in my last post. though i couldn't specifically pinpoint what exactly felt like a plot hole, it's one of those things that nag at you at the back of your mind--you know it's there, you just can't pick it out. last book was val. what would it be in this book? i feel almost like there was something about the whole betraying and not betraying about der jager that was off, though again, i couldn't pinpoint what. i'll leave that for now.
morgan is still a bitch. i still can't stand her and brian when they are together--seems to feel like too much melodrama, and it got annoying. it was like every time they were in a scene together, i would dread it, because the conversations all seem pretty predictable and there was no real chemistry to it. the only scenes i felt had some relative chemistry was her and lugh, or even strangely, from time to time, her and raphael. whereas i could find myself sympathizing with raphael, somehow i found myself reluctant to sympathize with morgan, despite her being the main character and having gone through numerous trials and whatnot. it feels almost to me like the author was way too forgiving with morgan as a character, and that's what gets my hackles up. other characters could make the same mistake and be subjected to scorn, but morgan would get away with it. i'm all for character growth, but at this point morgan is really slow going, and it's hard for me as a reader to make as many excuses for her as she does for herself. in short, she doesn't make a very compelling protagonist, and it pisses me off.
i guess that's as much as i have to say about this volume, and since the third is already out, i might persuade myself to read it when i have time. i don't expect it to become spectacular anytime soon though, because it seems to me the author isn't being daring enough. a pairing is obviously in the making for morgan and lugh, but it gets nowhere in two books. the relationship between her and brian is a back and forth dance, almost as if the author was stalling for time, but for what? regardless, i can't stand brian, so it's a moot point. adam and dominic don't mean much to me as characters, which i'd have to say is a very definite bad thing. the book still deserves 3 stars from me thanks to the redeeming twist at the end with her brother, but aside from that little minor event, i wasn't ready to be very forgiving, since i saw the "twist" with der jager coming a mile away. again, shortcomings that could've been easily fixed, but were overlooked. bad editors, or maybe the author didn't have enough distance away from the book for a good edit/rewrite. i guess my best guess would be that deadlines limited this book.
moving on to something else.
and as a parting shot, that dude on the cover is REALLY creepy.
