Book Review (105) Sweet Venom - Tera Lynn Childs

Sweet Venom (Medusa Girls #1)

by Tera Lynn Childs

Publication: 6th September 2011

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Pages: 345

Genre: Fantasy/Mythology

Age Appropriate: 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.

My Thoughts.

I loved this book, I finished it in less than a day and that's a definite sign to me how much I liked because I didn't want to put it down.

I loved how the myth of Medusa was used in a different way, and that in this story she was never bad it was just a rumor started by Athena because she was jealous, Medusa stopped all the mythological beings from stepping foot into our world with her two sisters Sthenno and Euryale, and all her female descendants after her would take on this job three girls in each generation, each bestowed with a different  gift that they also inherited from Medusa and her sisters.

Hydras have a distinctive odor

From the first line I was intrigued, I didn't really know what a Hydra was at the time but I'm certainly learning a lot of all the mythological creatures that there are.
As all the chapters are alternated between the triplets Gretchen, Grace and Greer and I like how we get a glimpse into their lives and the families that they were adopted out too, we start with Gretchen on the first chapter, as she tracks down the said Hydra from the first line and sends it back from where it came from, Gretchen didn't have the best adoptive parents and chose to run away.

I didn't ask for awful, selfish parents who liked to hit me when the drink and drugs ran out

She was found by Ursula an older lady who knew about Gretchen's destiny and helped her to train to be able to fight the creatures, and that's what she's been doing for the last four years since she was twelve.
Then we have Grace who can't stick up for herself but is an incredibly nice person with great parents and an adopted older brother Thane.

The mom and dad and brother I love more than anything and who love me back just as much

And finally Greer who doesn't appear in the book until about halfway through, she was adopted by a rich couple who are too busy with their work to pay Greer any attention.

I reconciled myself long ago to the fact that my parents aren't the demonstrative, caring, supportive type

 They all eventually find each other first Gretchen and Grace, Gretchen who is training Grace after Ursula goes missing, then they find out that they're triplets not twins like they first thought and they track down Greer who is not interested in anything they have to say and thinks that their stories about Medusa are all made up and that they're both crazy, until she spots one herself that is.
Gretchen's mentor Ursula goes missing, there's a bounty out on the girls' heads and through all that they also have boy problems.
I don't want to get into it any further and wreck the story but I hope you check this book out, I look forward to the next book Sweet Shadows out in September, and I'll leave you with some of my favourite quotes.


Favourite Quotes.

I sigh, "No Such luck." "Trying to will yourself bigger boobs?'

"Next time I'll lend you the fifty cents." "Save it for your implants fund." Vail flashes a sympathetic look at Miranda's less-than-overflowing chest

"How about a pen?' "What?' I blurt. "Forget you were coming to school today?' "Something like that."

"Are you deficient?' I ask, "What about me has ever said, 'Yes, please keep hitting on me'?'

 I give this book 4/5.