The Reading Shelf

See more reviews and other book-related posts at The Reading Shelf.Based on this book’s synopsis, I thought it was about superheroes, but many different reviews have been quite to point out that this book is about demons, not superheroes, which was good to know beforehand. I might have felt differently if I hadn’t known this ahead of time, but because I did I think I managed to like this book more than I would have otherwise.I kept expecting main character Audrey to annoy me. Her best friend is a boy and her best girl friend is tiny, sassy, and sparkles-obsessed; usually, when this type of girl is the protagonist, you have to deal with her often looking down on and complaining about the girly friend while always priding herself on not being “one of those girls.” Audrey certainly seemed to show hints of them, but it actually wasn’t too bad and Audrey definitely grew on me throughout the book.One issue that I had was that the “powerful Harrower masquerading as human” that was mentioned in the premise didn’t really make a big appearance until the last fourth or so of the book. He was mentioned sometimes prior to that, but he was a very small, easily forgotten character in the background. Based on the premise, I thought he would be the Big Bad that remains a threat throughout the book, but he really didn’t show up much and there was another, earlier Big Bad that doesn’t even get mentioned in the summary.The story itself was pretty interesting. It started off a tad slow for me, but by the time I got to the last half or so I pretty much flew right through it. Sure, this is partly because I had nothing better to do than read at the time, but I’m sure I could have found something better to do if I hadn’t been so interested in seeing what was going to happen.There’s a twist that I saw coming (more like dreaded – it involved someone that I suspected but really hoped wouldn’t be involved) and the ending seemed a bit abrupt and confusing (wait, is the Big Bad really gone or what?), but overall I quite enjoyed this book and look forward to the second one.Rating: 4 out of 5 stars