Sweet Venom

Author: Tera Lynn Childs
Goodreads Rating: 3.39
Pages: 345
Format: Ebook

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.

I was so underwhelmed by this book it was incredibly disappointing. I really wanted to enjoy this book because I absolutely love Greek Mythology and this whole premise seemed really interesting. As far as the plot went, I really enjoyed the sisters meeting up and finding one another and figuring out all of these unknown mysteries, but as far as the sisters go, I didn’t like them individually very much. I liked the idea that these girls came together and that they were these triplets separated at birth, all different. I loved that little seemingly snuck in surprise. I knew what the book was about but when I finally went in to read it, I had forgotten the details of the synopses.

As I said, I wanted very much to like this book, but Gretchen, Greer, and Grace all made it so hard to really enjoy it. All three of them were what they were at face value, Greer was a vapid brat , Gretchen was this wanna be badass loaner, and then Grace was this indifferent weakling. If I was going to guess the order of their birth I would say that Gretchen was the oldest, Grace was the middle, and Greer was the baby. None of them broke the stereotype and that was what bummed be out. I wanted to like Grace, but she was this tree hugger hippie vegetarian who worse organicly made clothing, okay, fine, then there was Gretchen, abused by the foster care system left on her own, so she’s harder than she should be. Tht made two, and then Greer being this upper crust cashmere wearing girl whose parents were always absent because they had too much money. It made me bored.

In fact, towards the end of the book I was really bored and thinking that I wouldn’t read the second book but I will only because I am curious to see whats going to happen next. The plot line with the monsters was clever enough to keep me wanting to know more, and I loved that they could disguise themselves and that some of them seemed to try to fit in with society. I also loved that Athena was running a smear campaign against Medusa for her alleged come on to Poseidon. Thinking of these facts brought me back to Percy Jackson and made me think of Touch of Death only this plot was so different, but seemed to have the same base facts that one side of the girls body was poison and the other side was healing. It was clearly well thought and researched.

The story also moved at a decent pace, I didn’t feel like it was rushed or that things happened out of order. There was a natural progressions with both the relationships and the Medusa descendant plot. I was glad that we were able to get to know the sisters outside of their relationships with each other, even if I didn’t like them very much. I think that it was important to the plot that we see the sisters separately and then see how their bond grows and makes them stronger.

I’m interested to see what is going on with Nick, who we know nothing about, but clearly had an urgent message for Gretchen, and I’m interested to see what Thane is up to and if Milo is just an innocent bystander or if he is somehow involved in these shenanigans as well. I think that if the characterization had been a little more out of the norm, I would have liked it better, but as it stands, I wasn’t swept away like I wanted to be. I do wish that I hadn’t gone out to buy a finished copy of the book, but I will be donating it to my sister’s library, and I know that their mythology section will love it.

The Courts Decision: