Serpent's Kiss, by Melissa de la Cruz (The Beauchamp Family #2)

 To read what I wrote about the first Beauchamp Family book, click here.

Just as things have settled down in the off-the-map Long Island town of North Hampton for the magical Beauchamp family, everything gets turned upside down once more when Freya's twin brother Fryr, or "Freddie" as he's called now, returns from Limbo with shocking news - that it was none other than Freya's fiancé, Killian Gardiner, who set up his downfall.
He begs Freya to keep his presence a secret, even from their own family, but somehow the irascible Freddie is still able to conduct many affairs with the town's young lovelies from his self-imposed exile. Until he falls for the wrong girl.

While Freya tries to keep her brother from exacting revenge on the man she loves, Ingrid has her own problems. Her human boyfriend, Matt Noble, becomes entangled in a complicated investigation, and when the magical creatures at the center of it come to Ingrid for help, she has a difficult choice to make.

To top it off, a dead spirit is trying to make contact with Joanna - but does it mean to harm or warn the witches? All hell breaks loose at the family reunion over Thanksgiving, and much mayhem ensues, but when the culprit behind Freddie's imprisonment is finally revealed, it may already be too late to staunch the poison that's been released by the serpent's kiss. The spells cast by the bestselling Witches of East End continue in this bewitching follow-up that Melissa de la Cruz's many fans won't want to miss.

At the end of Witches of East End everything was in order, and then Freddie, Freya's twin who is supposed to be stuck in Limbo, mysteriously turns up. Now he is claiming that he is in fact innocent of the crime he did to get himself there (breaking some bridge) and that the guilty party is Freya's one true love, Killian. Freya is torn between her brother and her fiance, unsure who to trust but desperate to believe them both innocent. Meanwhile, Ingrid is navigating the shallow waters of a new romance with police officer Matt, but keeps messing things up and making up with him, this being her first relationship in the history of time. (Literally, the history of time because she's some sort of goddess.) Ingrid is also helping some lost amnesiac pixies (no, I didn't make that up) manage in our world while trying to get them to remember who they are, where they're from, what they're doing here, and who sent them. And Joanna is being stalked by a spirit, each of them trying to get messages to the other and failing. All the different stories connect eventually, but for the most part the story seemed kind of disjointed.

It's kind of a pain to read a book with three main characters sharing the point of view while being totally indifferent to one of them. I couldn't stand reading Joanna's story because of how immensely tedious I found it. I would skim her pages, looking words to draw me back in to the story, and often I would have to turn back to read what I missed when the story got confusing. Freya's point of view was lackluster compared to her part in East End, but I enjoyed it anyway, and Ingrid's was annoying because of her self-doubt and her repeated conversations with the pixies which seemed pretty much identical save for a plot-changing detail or two revealed in each one. And Freddie's story just made me dislike the interloper even more than I did when he blamed my precious Killian.

Around a hundred pages in I was all ready to just give up and put the book down. If I don't feel that urgent need to know what happens next and I have to convince myself to actually continue, what's the point of reading it? However, after flipping to the last page and reading about the really cool thing that happened I decided to give it a couple more pages. Serpent's Kiss wasn't amazing, but it wasn't boring or dumb enough to give up on. I wouldn't recommend the series to someone who isn't a fan of Melissa de la Cruz or fantasy, but I am looking forward to reading the final book in the trilogy. The only problem was that I had to get through the first two books first.


3.8 stars.