Review: Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins

What if there were teens whose lives depended on being bad influences? This is life for sons and daughters of fallen angels in Sweet Evil.

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 toward danger, but it isn’t until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage, and her will-power is put to the test. He’s the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.

A cross-country trip to meet her father forces Anna to face the reality that hope and love are not options for her kind. When she confronts her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

Anna is the  poster child, goodie goodie girl.  She pretty much hasn’t done a bad or rotten thing in her life (so sickly sweet sometimes it makes me want to choke her).  She finally commits her first bad deed shortly after meeting her teen heart throb Kaidan Rowe, son of the Demon of Lust.   I found that bit a tad hard to believe…never told a lie in your life until that moment?  Hmm I call shenanigans.  Oh yes, and soon after she meets him is also when she learns that she is the daughter of a Guardian Angel and Fallen Angel.

Wendy Higgins takes the cliché ‘why do good girls like bad boys’ and runs with it in a new an interesting direction.  Especially since it seems bad boy Kaidan may not want to be bad after all.  I think this plays up to the idea that some girls that fall for the bad boys think they can change them.  Now then! – let’s mound oodles and oodles of obstacles in their path shall we? – because what romance is worth having unless it breaks your heart into teensy teenage pieces first.  *evil laughter*

What I found most interesting about Sweet Evil were the twists on demons and their hierarchy as far as how they carry out their work here on the mortal plane.  I wanted to know more about all of these elements, and just how Anna being the only Nephilim born of the two opposing angel factions was going to make her special.  I have to comment that there were two particular scenes that I felt were very convenient information dumps on demon background.  These were like interviews,  so to speak – where she gets almost all her questions oh so easily answered.  Even though these were extremely convenient they still managed to work well within the story.

In fact, when I thought about it, my biggest gripe was I felt that not enough time in Sweet Evil is spent on the angel/demon storyline aspect and that too much was spent on romantic teenage angst.  This might be my own personal bias showing here in that I prefer romance take the backseat in the plot lines.

There were just these huge chunks of the book to me that were focused completely on Anna’s mental and emotional state in regards to Kai.  All of the swooning and agonizing over him was much too much for my tastes.  Then throw in what looked like might be the possibility of a love triangle?…But as to that maybe there won’t be – I guess readers shall just have to wait and see in the next book.

Essentially, the romance portion of this book took away some of my enjoyment only because it ruled the plot such that a lot of interesting things that could have been given attention were shooed to the side.  For instance a certain angelic artifact…I was thinking *drumroll* now here is going to be something to spice things up – but I was a little let down in regards to that.  However, Wiggins did a great job of setup for round two and I’m interested to know how things develop.

With all that said, Sweet Evil will definitely tantalize the taste buds of many a YA romance reader but might not be for those that are looking for something with more meat rather than teen heat to it.

                                                          Tabitha the Pabkins

Sweet Evil 

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