Novel Review: Tempted (House of Night, #6) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Rating (Out of 5): ~2.5?

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Release Date: 2009

Spoilers?: Not really.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

So...you'd think after banishing an immortal being and a fallen High Priestess, saving Stark's life, biting Heath, getting a headache from Erik, and almost dying, Zoey Redbird would catch a break. Sadly, a break is not in the House of Night school forecast for the High Priestess in training and her gang. Juggling three guys is anything but a stress reliever, especially when one of them is a sexy Warrior who is so into protecting Zoey that he can sense her emotions. Speaking of stress, the dark force lurking in the tunnels under the Tulsa Depot is spreading, and Zoey is beginning to believe Stevie Rae could be responsible for a lot more than a group of misfit red fledglings. Aphrodite's visions warn Zoey to stay away from Kalona and his dark allure, but they also show that it is Zoey who has the power to stop the evil immortal. Soon it becomes obvious that Zoey has no choice: if she doesn't go to Kalona he will exact a fiery vengeance on those closest to her. Will Zoey have the courage to chance losing her life, her heart, and her soul? Find out in the next spectacular installment in the House of Night Series, "Tempted."

The Cover:

I actually really like this cover. It's overall very pretty, I love the design and the colors and the models and their poses. It looks very pretty both on the screen and in person.

Quotes:

• "'Don’t you believe we make our own luck?’” (Hardback, pg. 78)
• "'Do not ever forget, as our people have always known, there is a deep power in words that speak the truth.’” (Pg. 155)

Review:

I’m surprisingly conflicted about this book. On one hand, I really, really disliked it, and on the other, I kind of want to read more? I don’t understand how that works, exactly.

So, I kind of hate a lot of the characters in this series, as well as the writing.

I don’t like the writing in this series, at all. Particularly the language used. Aphrodite cusses because she doesn’t care, but it seems like the other characters are too childish to do so themselves. Zoey avoids it under most circumstances, and Stevie Rae makes up ‘southern’ metaphors and curses and things. And there’s a different between making the choice not to curse, and thinking that they’re ‘naughty’ words because they’ve been told not to, the latter of which seems to be their reasoning.

Honestly, all of the child-proof cursing makes this read like a Disney-censored version of how teenagers actually talk. Like repeated use of ‘bullpoopie’ or just ‘poopie’. Then there’s the general repeated use of words, like super and uber, and brown pop (which seemed to be forgotten in the first half of the book, then repeated a handful of times in the second half), and the stupid ‘question-mark look’. The use of ‘undressed’ when the character still had pants on. And there’s the repeated defining of words, like the readers are stupid or shouldn’t look it up on their own, like ‘dour’ and ‘veracity’.

Then there’s the stupid characterization. There’s the stereotypical ones, like Damien, Jack, Kramisha, and Stevie Rae. Pretty much all of them, really. But then there’s the fact that most of the characters are defined by one thing: Stevie Rae=southern, Damien=smart gay, Erin and Shaunee=fashion friendly twins. It’s repetitive and annoying. It got on my nerves how repeated it was that Damien was the only smart person in the group. Then how impressive it was to Zoey that Stark reads.

It’s also easy to get annoyed with how all of the characters have to chime in to agree with something, so there’re four lines of four different characters saying some version of ‘yes’. Like we have to be reminded that each character agrees with each other and is there for the others.

It bothered me immensely how much emphasis there was on telling the truth, that the truth will lead you, you’ll just know. Like, we get it already, god. Also how repeated it was that the group could call on an element, that it was there for them, and how often they had to repeat the phrase to call on their element. Zoey’s calling on spirit got annoying fast, in particular.

I don’t like Zoey, at all. I kind of hate her most, in fact. And above all, I don’t believe that she’s strong enough or smart enough to be some high priestess, that she should be leaned on to guide the others. And it’s hard to agree with everyone leaning on her when you don’t believe her.

I was expecting to like Stevie Rae, but she got annoying kind of fast. Her storyline was interesting, and I am intrigued by it, but her as a character not so much.

There were a few characters that I did like, though. Aphrodite, and especially Darius, and her with Darius. They’re cute together. I do actually like Jack, even if he’s overly stereotyped. I like Heath a lot, which makes what happened at the end of this book really upsetting. I like Stark a lot, too.

I kind of don’t want to make this comparison, but Zoey was starting to remind me of Anita Blake, which isn’t good. But her predicament with all these guys was reminding me of Anita, in a very bad way. But the situation that happened to Anita wouldn’t happen in a young adult book, and the only other option that was popping in my head was, well um, what happened with Heath (as long as something doesn’t mess that up in the next book). Which depresses me a lot, but makes sense. Especially since Erik was out of the picture, thank god, finally. Also, it’s surprising how little kissing there is for a series with a girl surrounded by boyfriends. 

So I really didn’t like this book. I didn’t like it for a lot of reasons, obviously. And yet I kind of want to read the next one, because I do really want to know what happens next. And sometimes the kind of drama that this series involves is actually what you want to read, which is why I'm conflicted on the rating. But there are, like, six more books or something, and I don’t think I want to put myself through that much. It’s possible I’ll pick up the next book, if I find it extremely cheap, but it’s likely that I won’t because I disliked it enough.