Sweet Venom, by Tera Lynn Childs (Medusa Girls #1)

On a night out with her brother and his new (hot) friend, Grace starts seeing monsters everywhere. Then a girl who looks just like her heaves her over her shoulder and out of the club. Gretchen was shocked to find someone else who could see the monsters, and even more shocked to find her long lost sister. After joining forces, the two sisters find out that they weren't twins-they were triplets. However, Greer loves her life and has no interest in joining the monster-fighting gang with her sisters. Monsters are starting to appear in multitudes in San Francisco and the sisters need to do something about it-but will Greer step up?

My summary is nothing like the publisher's. From their summary I expected the triplets to find each other in the first 3 chapters and move on from there, but it took half the book for Grace and Gretchen to meet and Greer didn't make her entrance until almost 3/4 way through. Instead of being about descendents of Medusa fighting monsters, this book was about three sisters finding each other and living their normal lives. The events in Sweet Venom could have happened in a third of the space and words, but if I like the next book, then I'll acknowledge Sweet Venom as a good introduction.

I'm a huge fan of the Percy Jackson books, but I have one friend who refused to read them because she claimed that they would totally contradict Greek mythology. I have to say, I totally disagree with her about Rick Riordan's books because if anything, I think they extend Greek mythology into our century. However, I think what she said about those books can be perfectly applied here. Not only was there a whole thing about Medusa being good and Athena being bad, but they didn't even give the Medusa girls snake hair!! This story would have been much better had there still been long lost triplets with magical monster fighting powers, without any mention of Greek mythology.

What annoyed me about the girls was how they each took their stereotypes to the extreme. Grace was sweet and bubbly the entire time, Gretchen was strong and hard with a little bit of softie for Grace, and Greer was the snooty rich girl. They had nothing else to them and it got very irritating.

3.6 stars. Maybe the sequel will redeem it?

Grace just moved to San Francisco and is excited to start over at a new school. The change is full of fresh possibilities, but it’s also a tiny bit scary. It gets scarier when a minotaur walks in the door. And even more shocking when a girl who looks just like her shows up to fight the monster.

Gretchen is tired of monsters pulling her out into the wee hours, especially on a school night, but what can she do? Sending the minotaur back to his bleak home is just another notch on her combat belt. She never expected to run into this girl who could be her double, though.

Greer has her life pretty well put together, thank you very much. But that all tilts sideways when two girls who look eerily like her appear on her doorstep and claim they're triplets, supernatural descendants of some hideous creature from Greek myth, destined to spend their lives hunting monsters.

These three teenage descendants of Medusa, the once-beautiful gorgon maligned by myth, must reunite and embrace their fates in this unique paranormal world where monsters lurk in plain sight.