Jocelyn (The Reading World)
I love to read and can get very attached to my opinions, but recently I've been learning not to completely lose my head when people disagree with me, so feel safe to argue with me whenever you wish ;)
Paladin by Sally Slater
Lightly written and lightly enjoyed. I don't really have a thing for scary otherworldly creatures (demons), but the highlights in the characters provided nice counterpoints to one another.
Plus, the sword-wielding teenage heroine disguising as a man trope never gets old. There were many, many, many times when it got this level of tense:
...and my classmates would stare at me funny as I giggled uncontrollably with my eyes glued to my Kindle.
I think a more memorable book would have gone deeper in the emotional resonance scale. The action scenes felt repetitive and lacked tension for me because the enemy (again, demons) were so inhuman and never inflicted lasting, or at least believably lasting, damage. Braeden's character is the old "struggle against my inner monstrosity because I'm half beast" trope that seems set up for a dead end: if his humanity wins out, we already expect it, but if the monster side wins, there's not enough at stake to invoke any sort of tragedy.
Possibly the most nuanced bit of characterization is when
