REVIEW: Why 'Sweet Venom' didnt keep its bite...

Book: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs
Number of pages:
Book status: Not complete!
Star rating: 1 stars

The premise of this book is simple; triples (separated at birth) are the decedents of Medusa, the guardian of the gate between our world and the prison of the evil beings. When Medusa was killed the only people left to guard the gate were her children; however these children are not aware of their abilities until they are faced with hideous monsters. Its only then that they find out they have fangs and death defying abilities! Anyone else see a potential danger in this set up?

So the story follows three decedents, Grace, Gretchen and Greer (see a familiarity of the names?); Gretchen is a long standing monster hunter who has grown up with monsters around her, Grace moves to San Francisco to escape one world only to be hurled into another more dangerous one and Greer is a high class snobby girl that gets side-blowed by the others when they hunt her down. Grace and Gretchen are introduced from the get go, with a very Percy Jackson feel to the writing; however after reading two thirds of the book I had yet to be introduced to Greer... when I reached the first chapter with her in I instantly hated the character; everything about the character screamed close the book... so I did.
 

What made me pick up this book was the magical mythical element, I had just put down the Percy Jackson Series and was seriously craving more ancient mythology; so when I read the back of the book I fell in love. But love soon turned to despise as more and more flaws started appearing; the characters felt flat and the story seemed to drag... there was more pages dedicated to Grace's infatuation with her once mute little brother (that seems to miraculously start talking half way through the book but no-one notices or reacts in any way?!?); in over 200 pages I only read about 4 monster attacks (each attack from two points of view which got really boring really fast).
 

The overall plot lacked focus *in my humbled opinion*; it went from nothing to everything and then nothing again... for God's sake why spend so much time introducing the schools and other characters if nothing ever happens in the school or with those other characters? The plot jumped from one element to another and never really had any links... but this may be because of the number of viewpoints, working three viewpoints into one 350 page book isn't easy or really recommended because you don't et enough out of each character. I think that if Tera Lynn Childs had focused more on the overarching plot and less on the minor plots that seemed to have little to no relevance to the enhancement of the book I may have been more inclined to finish the book.
 

There were elements of the book that screamed Percy Jackson, the details of the Greek mythology were scarce and according to the book totally wrong anyway... stating that the changes to the current known Greek mythology were due to changes made by the Gods and therefore everything you go into the book knowing is pointless... why break rules that really don't need to be broken?!?
 

Although I rated this book a 1 star; please don't feel inclined not to ever read it, the book has amazing potential but I couldn't force myself to complete it.

However there are other books if you like the Greek Mythology aspect; I highly recommend the Percy Jackson Series; both the Olympian Series and the Heroes of Olympus Series. However Rick Riordan has a third mythological based series; The Kane Chronicles, however this is based on Egyptian Mythology but still highly recommend the read.