Book Review: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Sweet Venom

Author: Tera Lynn Childs

Series: Medusa Girls #1

Release Date: September 6th, 2011

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Age: Young Adult

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

I love Tera Lynn Childs's books, because of her strong heroines, funny characters and fast paced stories. Sweet Venom was on my wishlist since I discovered it, specially because it's about Greek Mythology.

The story starts with Gretchen and Grace. Gretchen is a hunter, she hunts monsters while going to school and training at nights. She doesn't have a live, except for the hunting. She's strong and very independent, but very lonely.

Grace is just moving to San Francisco and starting a new school. She's the typical insecure girl, not very independent and a computer geek, but everything in her changes when she suddenly start seeing monsters, and is kidnapped by a girl who look just like her!

Obviously Grace and Gretchen are sisters, and not only share their look but their abilities to kill monsters. But why there are so many monsters? And where is Greer, the other sister?

I really liked the way Sweet Venom's story is told, alternating the sisters point of views, because we get to know each one of them very closely and understand how their lives have been and their different personalities. It would be easy to relate to one of the sisters, or at least like one of them. My favorite right now is Gretchen, she's a total kick ass!

I love Greek mythology and I think the author did an amazing job creating a different story using the popular Medusa myth. She's always the bad, but I think she could have been misunderstood all this time! It was cool to read about the girls using their Medusa-powers without being bad.

Overall, I enjoyed Sweet Venom. It has action, myth and possibly romance coming in the sequel. If you like strong girls and monsters hunting, then this one is for you!

More about this book at teralynnchilds.com, Goodreads, Amazon, The Book Depository, Barnes & Noble.