I received this book from Amulet/Abrams & Chronicle in exchange for an honest review.

Genie Lo has just become the new Guardian of California, appointed by the Jade Emperor himself and now on top of deciding where she wants to go to college, and what exactly she wants to do with her life, she needs to babysit a bunch of Chinese demons called yaoguai stuck on earth and under her control. But even more evil is coming her way, and Genie may have to team up again with her boyfriend Quentin aka the Monkey King and Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin to defeat it.

This was a fun sequel to The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, and continued Genie and Quentin's adventures together as demon squashing, couple goals. I enjoyed the deeper look into Chinese folklore which I loved learning about in the first book, and I appreciated that we learned about a few more legends in this one, and there was an appearance of a few more Gods as well.

I definitely think this book lacked some kind of energy that the first one had, and definitely didn't shine quite as brightly for me as The Epic Crush did. I don't think Genie had that much more character progression as she did in the first as well, and The Epic Crush could have been left as a stand alone without any real damage being done to the overall story. This book also takes places over a shorter period of time (one long weekend versus the several months of the first) but the pacing felt a lot slower for some reason.

I do still love Genie's friendships in this book - particularly with Yunie, and we see her friendship with Guanyin really deepen in this one as well which is lovely. I can't see speak for the representation in this book but I appreciate how much I learned from it and the new zest I have tor read more stories based on Chinese folklore as it's so entertaining and bad-ass!