Pam's Review: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Sweet Venom 
~Tera Lynn Childs 
Reading level: Ages 13 and up 
Hardcover: 352 pages 
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books  
Publish Date: September 6, 2011 
ISBN-10: 0062001817 
ISBN-13: 978-0062001818 
ASIN: B004W2YYVI

 From the author's website:
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.

Grace just moved to San Francisco with her family. She is shy and insecure, and she hopes that this move will be a fresh start for her. She is hopeful that she can be a new, confident person in this new school where nobody knows her. Grace soon learns that changing her personality is much harder than she thinks when a bully gives her a hard first day. Things begin looking up though; she starts spending time with her brother and his friend Milo who she has a crush on. They are all at a restaurant when it happens the first time; Grace sees a Minotaur. She is not sure if she is crazy or what exactly is going on, but soon she runs into someone who looks exactly like her, someone who will explain everything to her, someone that is quite possibly and probably her twin.

Grace turns out to be a triplet (you can find this out just by reading the back of the book, so don’t worry, I’m not giving anything away). The girls, Grace, Gretchen, and Greer, are very different from one another, and only one, Gretchen, is aware of why they are seeing monsters in the first place. They are decedents of Medusa and it is up to them to protect man kind. Will Grace and Greer walk away, going back to their once normal lives, or will they fight together and send the monsters back to where they belong?

My thoughts:
This book is written with three different points of view, but I felt that it was mostly focused on Grace. While I was about halfway through this book I was excited, telling people I think this is going to be the next big young adult book, like Twilight or The Hunger Games. Then about halfway through I’m not sure what happened; it was still a good story, but it lost some of its pull on me.

Overall though, it was definitely a good read. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets turned into a tv show or even a movie. It looks like this is going to be a series, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get better. I’m curious to see what the girls will be up to in the next book.

 My Rating:

 Pam
Book provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.