Book Review - Untamed – The House of Night by P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast

Synopsis: Life sucks when your friends are pissed at you.  Just ask Zoey Redbird – she’s become an undisputed expert on suckiness. In one week she has gone from having three boyfriends to having none, and from having a tight-knit group of friends who trusted and supported her, to being an outcast. And the worst part is, she knows it’s her own fault. Speaking of friends, the only two Zoey has left are undead, unMarked, and unable to stop bickering with each other. So who can blame her for befriending the House of Night’s newest transfer student, the majorly hot Olympic archer, James Stark?

Meanwhile, Neferet has declared a war on humans after it appears that the People of the Faith have murdered two vampyres. But Aphrodite’s latest visions show a world completely different from the High Priestess’s promises, a world full of violence, hatred, and darkness, all because of Zoey’s death—and the only way it seems she can prevent it from happening is to make things right with her friends. Zoey knows in her heart that fighting with humans is wrong. But will anyone listen to her? Zoey's adventures at vampyre finishing school take a wild and dangerous turn as loyalties are tested, shocking true intentions come to light, and an ancient evil is awakened in PC and Kristin Cast's spellbinding fourth House of Night novel.

Review: Right off the bat, this is my favorite book of The House of Night series.  Yes, it’s only book 4, but it is fantastic.  This book doesn’t deal with Zoey’s love life as much as the others have.  I’m all for the ooey-gooey bits, but this one does well without her having a boy (or man) in her life.  It focuses on Zoey coming into her own and she is beginning to portray the high priestess that she really is. 

A new character, Stark, is introduced, but his part is just too short in this book, so I’m  hoping there will be more to come of him in the future books. Neferet has truly gone evil and Aphrodite is, gasp, nice!  I finally like Aphrodite and am happy to read about her snobby self without wanting to smack her.  Zoey’s Grandma comes to stay at The House of Night and it is easy to feel the love all of the fledglings feel towards this woman.  The Cast’s did a wonderful job of weaving Cherokee stories into the book for both background purposes and featuring the tales up front and center.

The novel is a quick read because it’s just so hard to put it down.  The book comes to a close in the midst of the action and you are left unaware of what’s happened to some of the characters outside of the main group of friends.  It is the biggest cliffhanger of the series thus far, leaving us waiting to find out how Zoey will save the world.

You can pick up Untamed at Amazon.com.
The others in the series are: Marked (book 1), Betrayed (book2), Chosen (book 3), Hunted (book 5), Tempted (book 6), and Burned (book 7 due out April 27th).

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