Betrayed, by PC and Kristin Cast

[tea_and_tomes]

(Buy from Amazon.ca)

Summary: (Taken from GoodReads) Fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird has managed to settle in at the House of Night. She’s come to terms with the vast powers the vampyre goddess, Nyx, has given her, and is getting a handle on being the new Leader of the Dark Daughters. Best of all, Zoey finally feels like she belongs--like she really fits in. She actually has a boyfriend…or two. Then the unthinkable happens: Human teenagers are being killed, and all the evidence points to the House of Night. While danger stalks the humans from Zoey’s old life, she begins to realize that the very powers that make her so unique might also threaten those she loves. Then, when she needs her new friends the most, death strikes the House of Night, and Zoey must find the courage to face a betrayal that could break her heart, her soul, and jeopardize the very fabric of her world.

Thoughts: One of the biggest complaints I see about this series is that the lines are too clearly drawn. In the first book, you know that Neferet is good, and you know that Aphrodite is terrible and not to be trusted or liked, and no two ways about it.

Then book 2 comes along and blows these conceptions out of the water. Nothing is a certain as it was in the first book, and so I can only assume that the people who wrote those comments read only the first book of the series and didn't bother to continue.

The plot is really starting to thicken here. More mysteries are revealed and are made more confusing, Zoey's world starts to get much more complicated, and I don't just mean her mundane issues of, "Oh, which guy should I date?" (Which does wear on the reader after a little while. Come on, Zoey, your love life may be complicated, but there's more going on than whether or not you're going to date the old, the older, or the new.) The lines that seem so clearly established in book 1 start to desolve, and everything started to get much more complicated.

I was impressed by the way Stevie Rae's death was handled in this. Yes, I admit to shedding a sentimental tear during that scene. Zoey's shock afterward was very believably done, very realistic. That's what I get struck by more and more as I read on. These books, for all that they have their problems and their bits that irk me, are so believable. Characters act like real people. They aren't two-dimensional, they have their layers, and I feel that the authors actually know how to write teenagers.

Unlike some authors who write sanitized cardboard cutouts of teenagers.

I'm very much looking forward to the next book, to figure out more about what's happening with the dead fledglings (does anybody else think that "Dead Fledglings" sounds like a heavy metal band?) and about Neferet's duplicity.