Mortal Danger by Ann Aguirre

 

I'm trying to purge my room of its physical copies of books and that means a lot of YA I've stocked up over the years. MORTAL DANGER is a book I bought years ago but never read. 99% of the reason I bought it was because I love the author, Ann Aguirre: her Sirantha Jax series is my everything.

MORTAL DANGER is... a very strange book. Actually, a lot of my friends really didn't like it and I can sort of see why. It's like a weirder version of the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning, with a high school revenge plot and some insta-love thrown in. Is it cliche and silly? Yes. Did I care? No, not particularly. The pacing and story-telling was so much fun that I was just like #YOLO and kept reading, despite things that would normally annoy me so much that I'd put the book in question down.

Part of that is the heroine. She's pretty compelling. In the beginning of the book she is about to kill herself (major triggers) but an otherworldly figure intervenes, cutting her a Faustian bargain: three favors in exchange for her soul (well, basically). As we get to know the heroine, we find out that Edie had some truly fucked up stuff happen to her at her private high school, but the changes from her first wish make her realize that happiness and revenge don't necessarily walk hand in hand, which is a surprisingly mature lesson-- and one I wasn't really expecting to see here.

I liked the idea of the game and the opposing forces and seeing whether or not Edie would use up all her wishes kept me turning pages. I'm also a sucker for a hot dangerous guy, and Kian was charming although he wasn't quite "bad boy" enough to suit my particular tastes. This book is trying to do a lot of things and maybe it's too many but I enjoyed the ride and you might, too. It's a lot more brutal than most YA these days ventures to be and I kind of admire it for that.

3 out of 5 stars