Series: Falling Kingdoms Series
Author: Wendy Higgens
First book: Sweet Evil
Genre: Paranormal, urban, fantasy, romance, YA
First book rating (and overall rating):
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?
MY THOUGHTS
Sweet Evil is the debut series of author Wendy Higgens, and is undoubtedly her breakout work. Even to this day, when people are looking for urban paranormal ‘demon bad-boy’ YA books, they would definitely come across this book as a recommendation at least once. It’s actually how I discovered the book in the first place. I just finished the Obsidian series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, and literally, everyone recommended me directly to this book, specifying “If I enjoyed Obsidian”.
It’s probably because of that I really am disappointed with this book, because it didn’t exactly live up to my high expectations, and was…a flop for me.
While I couldn’t agree more with those who absolutely despise this book as ‘the second Twilight’, there’s also a reason why I found myself still unable to ditch this series before finishing it.
The hate-love relationship definitely didn’t live up to Obsidian, but it patently was not even close to some of the worst ones I’ve read. Although I found myself not shipping or caring Kaiden and Anna as much as I did with other OTPs, their relationship was not really cliche, it flowed realistically, and is well written.
One thing that really stood out for me, and ultimately got me to give it three-and-a half stars (despite me not enjoying it as much as I would’ve liked), is that I recognized the series’ unique idea, and how the author built the world-building around the idea of ‘seven sins’. Not only do we get to see how each sin can become ‘a job’, and how the Nephilims are doomed with their destiny. They don’t have to choice but to do sins because if they don’t they’ll be punished and killed by their devil fathers, and on the other hand the angels won’t help them because they’re the children of the devil, and in result doomed to go to hell. It’s a perfect idea of an unfair system, how people in our society can be stuck in the middle, and instances where the criminals truly aren’t evil, just that they weren’t given a choice by society.
This is why although I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I hoped, and it can be considered a disappointment, I still gave it decent scores (and not bad ones) because I acknowledge the fact that despite I myself didn’t exactly enjoy it too much, it’s still a good series.