Book Review - Sweet Peril

Sweet Peril
Author: Wendy Higgins
Series: The Sweet Trilogy #2
Genres: Paranormal, Urban Fantasy | Young Adult
Release Date: 30th April 2013
Publishers: Harper Teen
No. Pages: 371
Source: Borrowed
Rating: 
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Anna Whitt, the daughter of a guardian angel and a demon, promised herself she’d never do the work of her father - polluting souls. She’d been naive to make such a vow. She’d been naive about a lot of things. Haunted by demon whisperers, Anna does whatever she can to survive, even if it means embracing her dark side and earning an unwanted reputation as her school’s party girl. Her life has never looked more bleak. And all the while there’s Kaidan Rowe, son of the Duke of Lust, plaguing her heart and mind.

When an unexpected lost message from the angels surfaces, Anna finds herself traveling the globe with Kopano, son of Wrath, in an attempt to gain support of fellow Nephilim and give them hope for the first time. It soon becomes clear that whatever freedoms Anna and the rest of the Neph are hoping to win will not be gained without a fight. Until then, Anna and Kaidan must put aside the issues between them, overcome the steamiest of temptations yet, and face the ultimate question: is loving someone worth risking their life?

The following review may contain spoilers concerning earlier books in the series.
If you have not read the previous installments, please proceed with caution.

Sweet Evil was a book that I never intended to like, let alone swoon over. It was pretty unique, and was so much more than your typical paranormal romance. After I read it, I was really looking forward to reading Sweet Peril, and it may have taken a lot longer than I thought but when I finally got around to it, I was excited. However I'm sad to say that maybe it was my ridiculously high expectations of the sequel but it just wasn't what I thought it was going to be.

Because of the 3 star rating, I'm going to start by explaining why I didn't like this book as much. I think the thing I disliked the most about the book was how much dialogue there was, because of the way the book was set out, with time moving fast and jumping from one month to the next until over a year has passed, having nothing but talking sometimes leaves you without a picture for what's really going on, and with that a sense of confusion. Because of a lack of description, character development, I just didn't feel any connection to anything or any one, which was a real shame.

One of the other things I didn't like about this book, that I did like with Sweet Evil, was the back and forth between Anna and Kai. In the previous book it was cute and compelling, in this all I kept thinking was just how annoying I found it, and I think that's one of the reason's I found it so hard to connect to Anna where as before I could relate with her on some level. I didn't like reading about her constantly moping over him (I know she's in love with him but her feelings is something I felt moved too quick in the last one anyway), it really felt like ever other page it had Anna thinking about what he was doing, how he would react if he was there with her and so on. I also didn't like the new 'relationship' in the story, to me it was almost like Higgins thought she must have a love triangle in the story to make it more interesting and fiery, when all it did for me was left me scratching my head and wondering why it had been put in there. It didn't work, it didn't make sense and it made Anna seem stupid and only concerned with her own feelings. (For anyone who has read the book, if you would like to know why I think that then feel free to ask me, it would just be a spoiler if I talked about it here.)
I did however love the idea of the prophecy and the mission Anna was set on to find allies, I just wish that instead of so much time passing in a blink of an eye, it would have been spaced out a lot more. I think it would have worked a lot better if Anna and Kope got to spend a few days, if not a week or two in each new place trying to win over Nephilim, that way I think we (or just me) could have really got a feel for the type of person each new character was, sure there was a lot of explaining about who their parents were and what interests and what not they have, but I didn't really know them and that made it hard to really form any opinions about them, it felt we had a new person shoved in our face and then once the agreed to join the cause (pretty damn quickly if you ask me) Anna and Kope were off again and you only heard about said character again in passing, even when they were in it again it wasn't for that long.

All in all, the book had its good points and it's bad points. I was disappointed, I'm not going to lie. I think as a sequel it really could have been a lot better than it was and sad to feel little things missing from the lovely relationship and bond between Anna and Patti, to the wonderful friendship with Jay, I just think that in order to make way for new character and new themes, a lot of important things had been forgot about along the way. Too much was forced into 371 pages and the story would have just flowed better if it was split over two book's. The sad thing about this for me is the story has so much potential, I just think this book was a bump in the road and I'm really hoping the next one is better.