Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins

EMBRACE THE FORBIDDEN. What if there were teens whose lives literally depended on being bad influences? This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels. Tenderhearted Southern girl Anna Whitt was born with the sixth sense to see and feel emotions of other people. She's aware of a struggle within herself, an inexplicable pull towards danger, but Anna, the ultimate good girl, has always had the advantage of her angel side to balance the darkness within. It isn't until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage and her willpower is put to the test. He's the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna. Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

Rating: 4.5 stars

I was expecting better, I'll admit. It was amazing, but with the reviews I had read about it, I was anticipating either beyond fabulous, or absolutely terrible. This book was neither. I loved it, don't get me wrong, the characters were easy to fall in love with and the plot was solid. I absolutely cannot wait for the second book to come out. Read this book, I beg of you.

Now you're probably all going, if it wasn't as amazing as you hoped, why do you want us to read it so bad? Well, despite my unhappiness it didn't blow me to a galaxy far far away and back, it did blow me to a galaxy far away, which is still pretty freaking awesome.

The story has mostly to do with demons instead of angels, which was a nice break. It's hard to find a good angel story, they're becoming more and more stereotyped like vampires and werewolves and such. So demons were a nice break, but, be that as it may--they weren't nearly as kick-ass as I had hoped they would be. They were brutal, and I think Higgins really tried to make them horrifying, but to me they weren't much scarier than a bunch of sadistic people. I know that's awful, but it seems most bad guys are that way and I was really hoping for something truly and deeply awful about these ones. They kill, and they lead people towards sin, but hey, that's modern day society for you.

There are different statuses demons have, there is Satan, the top dog, beneath him is his messenger Azael, and then there are our main guys, the dukes. There is a duke for each of the seven deadly sins (greed, lust, pride, envy, wrath, sloth and gluttony (sloth and gluttony got paired up as they often go hand in hand)) and then there were a few more added as time went on (lying, hatred, murder, theft, adultery, and substance abuse) which makes for a total of twelve dukes. Beneath the dukes are the whisperers. The whisperers do exactly as the name entitles them, which is go around and whisper into peoples heads, giving them negative thoughts and steering them towards evil and such. The dukes command the whisperers, and all the whisperers want to be dukes, but will never get there.

Anna was a nice character. I like her, she was always sweet and nice and doing her best not to do drugs, which she is constantly being drawn to because of her father, who was the Duke of Substance Abuse. But one thing about her kept nagging throughout the entire book. She was always crying! She had very dramatic mood swings into sorrow. But other than her little crying problem, she was a real sweet girl. I was surprised when she didn't turn Kaidan down though, that guy must have some serious skill...

Anna was a bit of a crybaby, and often times I have dreamt of knocking some sense into that half-demon head of hers. She didn't seem to understand anything, unless it was about her heritage. I guess maybe she just heard what she wanted to hear, but it still annoyed the heck out of me.

Speaking of, Kaidan was by far my favorite character. I mean, the son of the Duke of Lust. Duke of LUST. *cue swoon moment* Kaidan (pronounced Ky-den) was your classic cocky, self assured, jack-ass guy. And I loved him.You could see how much he cared for Anna, even when she didn't. He was positively adorable, in a get-in-my-bed-right-this-instant kind of way. My favorite scene had to be when he was teaching her about the, erm, sense of touch ;) And I liked the fact that Higgins didn't focus to much on his band, Lascivious. I love bands, just not in books. In books they tend to focus too much on the band and to little on the plot and the characters, so I was really pleased to see that the band had just enough attention to make it important, but not enough to make it over the top.

Anna's father is pretty hard core. Just saying. He's the ultimate bald guy. Like Bruce Willis. On drugs. While trying to persuade other people to do drugs as well. You know, typical father kinda stuff.
That aside, John LaGray was bad-ass--not above and beyond bad-ass--but just bad-ass enough to get your attention so you go 'wow, this guy is bad-ass' (Yes, I am aware I used the words 'bad-ass' four times in one sentence)

Kaidan's father (I forgot how to spell his name) was pretty much the rain on my parade. Here we have a beautiful love blooming, and then there's whats-his-face to go and screw
+ it all up for us. Whenever he was mentioned, I was practically screaming to just ignore him. It was upsetting me.

Kopano was nice enough. I liked him, he was a sweet guy, but I just don't see him as a legitimate love interest. He was there for Anna, and that's all well and nice, but I am officially Team Kaidan. There was something about Kopano that kept me interested in his character. I don't know if English was his first language, but he always said things out, no slang or anything. He was so proper, but it worked with his character.

The beginning just went a bit to fast for me. Every bit of information was just whizzing by, and Anna had this knack of accepting all of that stuff really easily, but when it came to Kai, she just couldn't take a hint. It seemed as though Higgins was a bit of a novice writer in the beginning, but by the middle the writing got a whole lot better and I started enjoying the book a lot more.

Everything considered, I would recommend this book very highly, and I enjoyed it very much.

xxAvalon