READING: Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins

Publication date: May 1st, 2012
Published by: HarperTeen
Genre: YA Paranormal, Angels/Demons
Rating: 2/5

What if there were teens whose lives depended on being bad influences?

This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels in Sweet Evil.

Tenderhearted Southern girl, Anna Whitt, was born with the sixth sense to see and feel emotions of other people. She’s aware of a struggle within herself, an inexplicable pull toward danger, but it isn’t until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage, and her will-power is put to the test. He’s the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.

Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

I keep seeing 5 star rating after 5 star rating for this book and I just don't get it. I really don't. I think I'm getting too old for the frivolity of YA. Or maybe Sweet Evil was that bad.

And it's a real shame because the arch story wasn't that bad. There are the 7 deadly sins, only with a bunch more in there just so that we can have more characters, and each is represented by a Duke who is a demon. Duke's daughters and sons' job is to embrace their trademark sin and kinda spread it among their peers. Problem is, some of them don't want to follow on their daddy's footsteps and chaos ensues. See? Not too shabby, right?

Wrong.

Because the book had very little to do with that and everything to do with pretty much everything else.

Kaidan (hottie), as Patti (Anna's mother) explained to Anna (angelic virtue personified but in a sarcastic way), is very dangerous and she shouldn't be anywhere near him. After said mother met Kaidan for 20 minutes (Anna knew him less than a day at that point) she decided he was a respectable lad with sensible shoes, so she let her only daughter go to a road trip with him. All alone. Sharing rooms in motels. That kinda road trip. But that's OK. She made snacks for the road.

No comment on how parenting is portrayed in the book.

I don't know what is wrong with YA and romances lately, but I am not a fan of the "hold the sex but throw everything else in there" kinda relationship. This is not the first YA that's done it. Very sensual scenes between Anna and Kaidan. Minus the sex, of course. Because that would be wrong. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't been for the fact that Anna knew him for hardly 2 days, and for the fact that she was emotionally unstable. She keeps throwing the L-bomb at anyone with nice enough hair it seems like, and she wants me to be invested in her relationship and care for it? No way.

Exposition scenes were so awkward. Anna and Kaidan are in the car and he says out of the blue "Is there something you want to ask me? Is there something you want to learn about out heritage? Come on, you know you want to". Ish, you know. But that was the gist. And she started asking questions and he kept answering them, all robot-like. And then later he goes "OK, one last question because girl my bladder is about to burst. I need a loo break stat! We'll come back to the weird, spontaneous Q&A when it suits the story". I'm not kidding. Wish I was. And then again when she goes to see her father, exact same thing. Her father, the Duke of substance abuse, this alcoholic druggie, who has ended up in jail and hasn't seen his daughter for 16 years goes "OK estranged daughter. What do you want to know?" Whoa! OK I'm all for exposition chapters but jeez! Try ease the info in a conversation, don't force it. If you force it, it sounds more of a business transaction than a real dialogue.

I'm very upset because the idea behind Sweet Evil sounds insanely good but the execution was insanely bad. The scene at the end with Gluttony was so intense and perverse, I kinda loved it. Why wasn't the rest of the book like that?? I would surely be a fan of that!

But as it is, Sweet Evil for me, will always be the book about a girl who cried gonorrhea at the first chapter.

Sad.