Book: Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs

Published September 2011|Published by HarperCollins|384 pages|Purchased for my Nook

Series?  Yes, Medusa Girls #1

Genre: YA: Fantasy/Paranormal- Mythology Re-telling

Find out more: Goodreads|Barnes And Noble|Amazon|Tera Lynn Childs’ Website

Goodreads.com Summary: 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 in myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.

I’ve been going back and forth for a while, trying to figure out if I wanted to read Sweet Venom or not.  But I finally bought it, read it, and really liked it!

I’m a fan of mythology re-tellings (especially when it’s Greek mythology), and I really liked that it focused on Medusa and her descendants.  I mean, triplets representing Medusa and her sisters, and each one having the characteristics of each one is pretty cool.  The prophecy part of it was kind of interesting, even if it was expected.  We are talking about Greek mythology so a prophecy is expected.

I liked that all three characters- Gretchen, Greer and Grace- narrated the novel.  And I LOVED that they were all very different characters, and I knew who was narrating without even needing to look at the chapter headings.  Sometimes, multiple narrators don’t work, but this a great case where it does work.

Grace is my favorite of the three, but Greer is also intriguing.  Gretchen is interesting, and most of the story is told through her eyes, but I just couldn’t completely connect with her the way I did with the other two.  There’s definitely a lot that can happen, and I have the feeling there are going to be some personality conflicts between Gretchen and Greer, with Grace playing mediator.

I liked seeing each one deal with the prophecy and the discovery that they are triplets with a destiny.  I was hoping for more of a connection between Medusa and the triplets, and that we’d get a little more about Medusa, but with some reading up on mythology (and the next book) I should be good.

Plus, San Fransisco totally works as the setting.  I can see the portal that leads monsters to our world being located in San Fransisco.

Final Thoughts:

I really liked Sweet Venom, and can’t wait to read Sweet Shadows.  It’s nice to see a re-telling focusing on Medusa, and I love that Gretchen, Greer and Grace are so different but still have to find a way to work together.  Sweet Venom gets 4 stars.