I really, really wanted this to be scary.

 

It wasn't.

 

The basic idea was terrifying, which is why I picked it up. Evil twin, coming back from the dead, this should have hit all of my shivery spots and somehow it felt weirdly plodding. How do you take a girl back from the dead

and somehow leave it with no thrills at all?

 

Some of it is that I felt like the explanations given for what caused the whole problem with Ash were a little sketchy. I don't mind things being left a bit unclear--I like having something to think about when the novel was over. But I got the feeling that things were supposed to be very clear about what was wrong there, it just didn't make a whole lot of sense and also wasn't very scary. Or touching. Or much of anything really. It should have made me tear up even if it didn't make me terrified, and it managed neither.

 

I didn't dislike any of the characters I was supposed to be rooting for, I didn't dislike the writing style, the basic plot was intriguing, but throughout I kept setting it down. I felt like I was forcing myself to finish it, and that's never a good feeling with a horror novel. I read it in the dark. I was ready to be terrified. I am a huge wimp. And yet the scariest part of the whole novel for me was discovering the page count was just over 300 pages instead of the 600 it felt like.

 

I've been kind of desperately searching for a good, scary book lately and I feel like I'm coming up short every time. 

 

I enjoyed this quite a bit, though there is a lot more sex involved than in what I normally read.

 

I've been on a huge mythology kick lately (thanks Percy Jackson!), and this fit the bill for me, though clearly in a different way. I liked the characters, and once I got past the sheer cheesiness of the premise (let's be honest, it's a bit cheesy and fanfic-y, and I love fanfic), I was quite hooked. There was a bit of a mystery, a decent chunk of action, a romance that turned out sweeter than I expected, and lots of history.

 

I loved all the history. I'm a history nerd, and I'm proud of it, and ancient history in particular is fascinating to me. Having Julian thinking back on his life was fascinating reading (in between all the smut...), and I liked that it didn't read like a history book of the time period: Julian had his own views on the Romans and on what was going on at the time.

 

It was also funny. Not laugh-riot funny, but I was smiling at quite a few of the lines and really enjoying the writing. Julian and Grace were both amusing and snarky and a little exasperated with the strange situation they found themselves in, and they weren't afraid to say so.

 

I'm glad I read this, and I'll definitely be going through the rest of the series. I love mythology and humor together; it's my secret (not so secret now, I guess) weakness, and this worked for me.