TITLE: The Demon Catchers Of Milan
AUTHOR: Kat Beyer
PUBLICATION DATE: August 28, 2012
PUBLISHER: Egmont USA
PAGES: 288 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: NetGalley
RATING: 3 stars
I have mixed feelings about this book. It gets 3 stars because it was mildly entertaining and also because most of its issues can be fixed in the upcoming sequel which has great potential to be much better. But my overall opinion of the novel was that it was mediocre at best. The writing style was okay, nothing amazing, but not bad. The character development was decent enough for Mia, but the majority of the other people felt very one dimensional to me. It was also just boring for a good portion and nothing gets resolved at the end.
The basis of the story is that Mia gets possessed by a demon and her distant family from Italy show up and save her and basically demand she return to Italy with them so they can protect her and teach her how to protect herself. So off to Milan we go…..and then nothing happens. Mia basically gets trapped in the house because she can’t protect herself so she can’t leave without at least 2 escorts. They set her in a room with a Italian dictionary and a bunch of history books and tell her to study and that’s basically it. Beyond hearing her whine about not being able to go out, all you read about is introductions to her enormous family and how they feed you constantly and how good the food is. I guess it was good in a way because you really get a feel for how trapped she is when you feel trapped as well, but it was slow and dull and it took quite a bit longer to read than it should have. There are a few random exorcisms thrown in and then boom novel over. So many things are left unexplained. They haven’t learned any new information on the demon they are hunting, Mia’s family is still cryptic as fuck when she tries to get explanations for things that happen, you don’t find out why there are random spirits in Mia’s room, and the whole Satanist tangent is never explored fully. I found that very irritating.
Something else that really bothered me was how attracted Mia was to her cousin Emilio. She comments numerous times on how attractive he is and how she can feel him near and so on. Now they are very distant cousins, but it still skeeves me out.
I don’t think I will be recommending this book to anyone until I read the sequel and see if it improves any or answers any of my questions, but it was a decent enough read.
****Thank you to Egmont USA for providing me with an eARC via netgalley in exchange for an honest review****
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