For those of you who don't know what this book is about, the main character is a bratty teenager called Zoey Redbird. One day in school she gets "marked" and now has to move into the House of Night to complete her transformation into an adult vampire. There she makes friends, enemies and boyfriends, all for no apparent reason, and life goes on as you would expect it to in a book.
When the second book begins, she is the leader of this elite group called Dark Daughters and Sons, has a boyfriend named Erik, is lusting after a vampire named Loren, and is starting to get attracted to her ex-boyfriend Heath, who likes (or should I say loves) her back.
I shall write the rest of my review in points, to make it easier for you and me both.
1. Get an editor Casts, or do it yourself. Here's the formula for writing a cheap, quick, and effortless book as demonstrated by the Casts -
i) Always write the first thing that comes to your mind. You are free to use the words "loser", "hee hee" and "random" as many times as you want.
ii) Don't waste your time editing. Your first and only draft is what you publish. This method works, as is proven by the House of Night series.
iii) Get your daughter to help you write. This will make the process both faster and cheaper. It's okay if the writing style changes drastically every few chapters. Remember, how much ever you think editing is necessary, it's not.
iv) There's no need to have a plot, as long as the protagonist has multiple boyfriends. Even if it starts getting so repetitive that the second book is exactly the same as the first, don't worry; in fact, you're on the right track.
v) Again, never forget, DON'T EDIT WHAT YOU WRITE.
2. Nala. Nala is a cat who has "chosen" Zoey to be her owner. Can we please take a moment to talk about the fact that all she ever does is "complain" and scare the "bejeezus" out of Zoey? Thank you. There's absolutely no point of her in the story, and that wouldn't have been such a problem, if only she didn't feel like something they had added just to make the book longer. As mentioned earlier, they have no plot, so having something to add a paragraph or two to each chapter really helps.
3. How Stevie Rae "twangs". Okay Casts, we get it. People from Oklahoma have a Southern accent. But that doesn't mean that every time your character from Oklahoma talks, they have to "twang". Each time Stevie Rae is mentioned, it is closely followed by the word "twang". Yet, the next time we are reminded again about how Stevie Rae is from Oklahoma and "twangs" when she speaks.
4. Everything has just one characteristic. I had mentioned this in my review of the first book as well, but it really needs to be discussed again. It's not just about the authors' vocabulary, but also how their imagination refuses to create complex people, places or objects. Zoey has long hair. Okay but it has a colour, style, thickness, or some other notable characteristic too right? The Casts: No. Erik is cool. What else? Nothing.
5. No description of anything. This point does overlap slightly with my previous one, but the utter laziness in writing has been taken to such an extent that nothing is enough to express it. All the people and places have no life what-so-ever. Everything is just there. I'll admit that long descriptions of scenery or some irrelevant matter get boring at times, but that doesn't mean everything has to be plain and bland.
6. Zoey wants to be in two three relationships at once. I get the love triangle authors create to make their story interesting. But this is just a whole new level of cool handsome guys falling for the main character. Her boyfriend situation made at least a little sense in the first book. Heath still liked her but now she liked Erik. But this whole "Erik is not exactly my boyfriend" (he is) and "Loren is so romantic" (he's not) and "I like Heath too" (...) thing is getting out of hand.
7. This is how the whole book goes - To be honest, in my humble opinion, to speak the truth, if you ask me, as I see it, in my estimation, to be completely truthful, I believe that I have totally forgotten how this sentence began.
In short, nothing makes sense. The authors have added a lot of brackets (don't get me wrong, I have nothing against them, but not so many when you're writing a book), and sometimes the tense or pronouns don't even match.
I can see that most of my points just boil down to the lack of editing by the authors, but there are so many examples of those that I can't help but write about it again.
8. Carelessness. There is something called fact-checking, Casts. And there is something called making sure what you are writing matches what you have written before. I can see why the latter may have happened though. The mother-daughter duo just writes what they feel like without bothering about anything. They probably have an idea about what they want to write and discuss it with each other before, then both of them end up writing the same thing.
9. Zoey and her friends think they're so cool. Ever since Zoey became the leader of the Dark Daughters, she had wanted to make some reforms. Since all her friends are the "Prefects" (the other main people who lead the group) with her, one of them thinks that they should do something to preserve their names and identity so that the future generations will remember them. And here, my friends, is where they have an amazing (not so much) idea. 'Let's stick our hands in some mud and then dump the mud outside so that people will walk all over it!' (Make handprints on cement blocks to put in the courtyard as fancy stepping stones. Basically that.) And what does Zoey think of the idea? "Unique and cool, just like us!"
10. How Zoey thinks she's a Goddess. Once Zoey hears some news on the TV that her ex-boyfriend has gone missing. It's understandable that she feels shocked (since she still has feeling for him, because why not), but the extreme over-acting of Zoey's is just too much. First, she starts feeling dizzy and then her knees buckle. Her faithful boyfriend, whom she does not deserve, catches her. She yells for a bowl because she wants to puke. She pukes in the bowl someone immediately thrusts in front of her face. Gets nauseated by the smell of her puke. Says ugh. Orders the bowl away. And all this while, her friends look at her with worried expressions and whatnot, and the authors give exaggerated descriptions of how much it affects her.
Even after Stevie Rae's death, I saw no reason why it should affect Zoey the most. After all, everyone else had known her for longer, while Zoey had been friends with her for only a month or two. But no, of course not, Zoey the Goddess-chosen fledgeling should always get what she wants and if she wants to be carried on the stretcher with the dying person, so be it.
11. Hypocritical characters. I found Zoey exactly like how she thought Aphrodite (her enemy) to be. Mean, snobbish, bossy, manipulative, selfish, controlling and egoistic. Even all her shallow friends hated Aphrodite for being just like how they were. Hypocritical people are the worst. Zoey and all her friends were also very judgmental and rude to people who weren't a part of their friend group; which was a big part of the reason why they wanted to reform the Dark Daughters in the first place.
12. Everyone is so stupid and everything is so obvious. I can already tell that the "Betrayed" part refers to Neferet. And that Zoey is going to become more or less Aphrodite's friend in this book. All the characters take so much time to comprehend simple stuff. Even when Stevie Rae became unwell, it was so predictable that she would die (since that's what fledgeling vampires do in their world), but they realise only once she dies that she had been showing those symptoms.
13. Too much stereotyping. Zoey is the epitome of stereotyping. She judges people based on absolutely nothing. She hates something about everyone who isn't her. Just because some girl is blond, she's mean. Only because someone's 'carrot coloured' hair are ugly, they're a loser. Only because some guy is handsome, he is sweet and romantic (and likes Zoey, but that's not the point).
14. Final thoughts. I am writing this part of the review a few days later, and I have finished the book now. I'll admit it got better at the end. The plot-wise ending of the story was obviously quite predictable, but at least there was a plot toward the end. I have sort of the same problems with this book as I did with the last one. It started off terrible, without any semblance of a plot. The last like three or four chapters finally had some sort of story (even though it was obvious), and I hated the characters all along.
Erik and Zoey's fake relationship somehow still existed in the second book. But he wasn't even in the book for the first half, which made it easier for the authors, since they didn't have to write any cringy scenes about how the amazing Erik likes the undeserving Zoey. Of course, all her friends remained her friends, and Neferet betrayed her and all, as had been obvious. They added a few more guy characters in this book, to pair up all her friends, but apart from that, it was the same as the first.
