Sweet Evil (Sweet Evil Trilogy #1) – Wendy Higgins

    Embrace the Forbidden
What if there were teens whose lives literally depended on being bad influences?
This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels.
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 willpower is put to the test. He's the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.
Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns?

Okay, before I even start to review this… You know how this whole YA Crush Tourney is going on? I was all, “What’s the big deal? Sure I’ve had book crushes, but I’m not all up in arms about any one of them…” And then I read this book. And MAN I was too late because Kaidan already lost to Finnick (really? Clearly not enough people have read this book) on July 13th (I finished on 7/26… Way too late). So that just shows you how quickly I went from zero to “I love him”!

So now to the review. Umm.. how do I put this? I FREAKING LOVED THIS BOOK. I haven’t felt this way about a book in a while. And that’s saying a lot considering I’ve given so many books 5-star ratings recently. I mean, for all of those that I adored, I loved this one that much more. Really. It’s like 6 stars, if that were possible!

Right from the beginning, I loved everything about SWEET EVIL. Anna is sweet and innocent and usually those characters are naive and annoying, but that’s not Anna at all. She’s a normal girl! Well, if normal means seeing people’s auras in colors, heightened senses, and oh yeah, daughter of an angel and a demon. But she acts normal, is what I’m really getting at here. She was so completely relatable because that’s who I was in high school. Subtract a little bit religious and Southern and add a little choir and basketball and that was me in high school. In fact, I was actually picturing this taking place in my high school whereas usually with books I just created some random place in my mind based on the details I was given. That’s how much I related!
Kaidan. Oh, Kaidan. Brooding. Sexy. British. Son of the Duke of LUST? What? How can anyone resist that? He was built to tease and tempt us and by golly, I was all for him. Then we get to know Kaiden a little better and see that he’s more then just his father’s son and he may actually care for Anna. Lust, romance, and tenderness!? Swoooooon. Yikes. Bravo, Wendy Higgins! Hands down the first character I’ve swooned for. Honestly.
The relationship that develops between Anna and Kai. SIGH. It’s so “I-want-you-but-I-can’t-have-you” and it kills me! They belong together, but they know they shouldn’t be together. I love where the story takes us and it just really tugs on your heartstrings to see these two apart!
I also really loved the best friend Jay! And I’m so glad this was NOT a love triangle situation! Anna can read auras as colors and right off the bat, she knows that Jay is not into her as more than a friend and she’s not into him. She knows his feelings and he doesn’t lust for her and I’m so glad  we don’t divert into love triangle here! It was a highly fascinating story and I think the presence of this love triangle would have ruined it, honestly.

Okay, and onto the actual plot — Once again, absolutely loved it. I think this could have easily crossed the line into religious with all of its dealings with heaven/hell/angels/demons, the fact that Anna’s religious and prays and goes to church — And (not so secret confession) I went to a Catholic school for 10 years. I almost felt like I was forced into religion (that’s a talk for another day, different time) so I always get so frustrated when characters are really religious. It’s just something weird that I have from how I grew up, but when a character is religious or I feel a book is preachy, I get immediately turned off. I feel like this danced perfectly on the line of sacred and secular and played extremely nicely interweaving the two.
I loved the creativity with it being so much more than just Nephilim being the children of demons, that Anna was the child of an angel AND a demon, which is not supposed to happen. I love that it was a little bit more of paranormal when we learn about that the way that Anna reads auras by seeing the colors of people’s emotions. The heightened senses also played a really big part. It was just so much more than Angels vs Demons and it just really drew me in.

QUOTES

• P 13: He was smokin’ hot. As in H-O-T-T hott. I’d never understood until this moment why girls insisted on adding an extra T. This guy was extra-T worthy.
• P 15: Kai, like Thai, only yummier.
• P 136: I’d had my first kiss, and I’d never be the same.
• P 231: I’ve heard the saying that you can’t miss what you never had. Only I did. The disappointment hurt.

Read it!

I’m not sure if everyone will love this one as much as I did… I think it was right place, right time you know? But I still had a ton of fun with this one!