House of Night (2) - Betrayed by P.C. and Kristin Cast
And a new part of the House of Night series - Betrayed which both fits to Z as well as to her boys (in French Trahie, in German Betrogen). I read it in German where it contained 478 pages. Ursprünglich 2007 veröffentlicht.
Zoey finally managed what she thought was impossible: She fits in! As the new head of the Sons and Daughters of Night, she fully intends to change the life at the House of Night for better – and Nyx seems to approve. Everything's just perfect – if she'd just manage to get rid of Heath. But a tragedy over-shadows her problems, and Z begins to unravel a plot that turns her world upside-down...
Okay, so far to the content. We have nice ideas and the style is as usual.
Stevie Rae, the twins and Damien are nice enough and the little band of adventurers is joined by Jack – Damien's sweet and very feminine boyfriend (I'm not saying feminine to discriminate anyone. I do not think that every gay person automatically behaves either feminine or masculine, depending on the gender they don't have – or that they are weak, sick or what ever. In this case, Jack simply is feminine – Damien says himself that Jack's “swishy”).
You get to know Aphrodite on a whole new level – she has her reasons for behaving like she does. She and Zoey have to ally to save Z's grandma, and then later on for other stuff as well.
I like how she managed the bridge-situation, by the way.
The police officers are pretty nice, they are calm and non-judgemental, unlike the other humans in this book – except for Heath & Grandma. It's actually quite sweet how he takes care of Zoey.
Spoiler:
His re-kindled relationship with Z was as unsurprising as unpleasant for me. I like Erik and I'm sorry for him – he trusts Z, he loves her and he says he'd rather share than loose her – and she throws it into his face like this. Okay, granted, she tried. She really tried to stop this and to break up with Heath. but afterwards, she didn't even tell him! This is so not okay. She owes him honesty, but this is not Z's strong suit.
As for her other relationships: I absolutely hate Loren. Maybe it's because my family consists of teachers and I have grown up with their view on responsibility and duty and all of this – which is pretty thorough. This means that the very notion of falling in love with your own teacher at Zoey's age is Brrr for me – and not exactly understandable. But the idea of A teacher seducing a student at his school is just unimaginably gross to me. If you really fall in love with someone so much younger than you? Okay. But if you act on it as a teacher and try to seduce the person? Hell. To. The. No. Or maybe I hate him because I can't stand the fact that Z is falling for another guy – seriously, this sucks! But maybe I've just seen it coming. He's an ass.
Apart from this, Stevie Rae's death was well done, really. As was the scene in the tunnels – poor Elizabeth No-last-name. Couldn't it have been Elliot?
The book was tense, the characters average – but the ideas still original. So...
In brief:
A star for ideas, one for content. Style and characters were neither remarkably good nor bad.
Prequel:
Sequel: