Author: Wendy Higgins
Series: Sweet Evil #1
First Published: May 2012
Publisher: HarperTeen
464 pages (eBook)
I am kind of in a state of disbelief over this book. I mean that in a, “What did I just read?” kind of way. It started off pretty good but very, very quickly went downhill for me. I just can’t believe over half the things that happened in this book. I’m surprised I actually read every word to the end.
Sweet Evil is about a girl named Anna. She’s super sweet and innocent, incredibly nice, and also, she can literally see people’s emotions, in colours. She’s always known she was kind of different from other people, obviously. When she turns 16, she meets Kaidan, a deliciously handsome teen boy who’s in a famous rock band. He’s the same as her — he can see people’s emotions, but the difference is, he knows why. Anna and Kaidan are Nephilim, the offspring of demons and humans. Born to one of the Dukes of Evil, their jobs is to corrupt humankind and have them destroy one another in sin. However, Anna is even more unique than she realizes — she is not the daughter of a demon and a human, but rather, a demon and an angel.
There are so many things I didn’t like about this book. I’ll start with the story and structure. I really did not like having the story world explained to me via question-answer sessions between characters. I can think of at least three long scenes where Anna is sat down with another characters (Kaidan, her foster mom Patti, or her dad) and they just explain things to her. It was like reading an interview, where Anna would ask a question and the other person would provide an answer. I find this to be a very boring and unimaginative way of revealing a story world.
A lot of events happened in this book that were just super unrealistic, and I don’t mean the demons and spirits and angels. The majority of characters in this book are 15-17. Somehow, every teen is hooked onto drinking and ecstasy and having sex, or so it seems. At age FIFTEEN? Holy cow. Maybe I just wasn’t “hip” when I was 15, but that seems awfully young to be doing these things. Not only that, but it’s incredibly easy for them to enter clubs and bars. I have no idea why. I highly doubt all the bouncers do is slap a bracelet on your hand that says you’re a minor. As the kids in this book showed, even with these magical bracelets, they got their hands on booze very easily. And wow, were they ever knowledgeable about alcohol, they knew so many drinks and mixes, it was mind boggling.
The characters were ridiculous. Anna is supposed to be super innocent, kind and a little naive. Well, she definitely came off naive, and very dumb, and very annoying. She’s stuck in this world where she wants everyone to hold hands and ring around the rosy. She’s also hypocritical. For example, Kaidan, being the son of the Duke of Lust, kept wanting to have sex with her. She kept refusing. Finally, one night, she randomly pounced on Kaidan, totally wanting to have sex with him because — get this — her poetry homework made her mad. Kaidan wasn’t great either. I saw no reason why the two of them fell in love after four days (Anna even admits it’s only been 4 days), but they did. Kaidan had little personality and the only thing he wanted from Anna nearly the entire time was to have sex with her, which Anna kept refusing yet she fell in love … Weird.
Anna’s parents were really aggravating too, especially her mom. Anna’s foster mom, Patti, is your stereotypical helicopter mom. At the same time, she makes dumb parenting decisions. Anna needs to go to California to meet her dad — why not go on a road trip with Kaidan, the boy you met yesterday? Yes, you know he’s the son of a demon, that should be no problem because you’ll just go right up to him and tell him to leave Anna’s virtue intact. He’ll listen to you, right? And then there’s Anna’s dad. She hasn’t seen him in 16 years, yet once they were in each other’s lives, they acted like they’ve always known one another, being super close and everything. It was bizarre. Not to mention how extremely uncomfortable it was to read about her dad bringing TONS of alcohol to her and teaching her how to drink alcohol so she can lure other people to drink and become drunk. She’s SIXTEEN. I don’t care if that’s her job as a demon child, she’s SIXTEEN! It did not inspire any warm and fuzzy father-daughter moments in me at all.
On a similar note, I do understand that this book centers around these demons that are each in charge of a sin, but I felt like the amount of it in the book was almost at inappropriate levels for a YA/teen novel. There’s SO much drugs and alcohol in this book which the characters drink with no consequences. Kaidan’s job is to have sex with girls, so he’s having one night stands in every other chapter. We have two twin girls whose job is to break up relationships and marriages. One of them describes being gang raped at age 13. Anna herself almost gets date raped. Who thought all this would be okay in a book with characters who are so young?! If this was an adult/general fiction book, that’s different, but this isn’t. I also disliked how this book emphasized virginity = purity. Implying that if you’re not a virgin, you’re a dirty, dirty whore, which is something some of the female characters who are not virgins experienced when the other kids at school found out they had sex with so and so.
I can go on forever about what I didn’t like about this book, but I think you get the point. There’s so many things I dislike about it and the story seemed to make less and less sense as the book went on. It’s really strange because when I first started the book, I actually really enjoyed the first chapter and was looking forward to some YA demon-angel mythology. I am definitely not interested in reading any more from this series :|
My Rating: 1/5
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