Betrayed (House of Night, Book 2)

This book is just as good as the first, it makes you feel like your living Zoey Redbird's life right along side her.

Betrayed was a solid follow up to the first House of Night book, Marked. The tension level was elevated, the stakes were higher, and the concepts got a little bit more adult in this one.

Zoey has a lot more to handle in this installment: an attraction to three men--Erik, her fledgling boyfriend; Heath, her human ex-boyfriend who has Imprinted with her and shows no signs of being bothered by it; and Loren Blake, vampyre poet laureate and visiting professor, who is technically off-limits to her--which is making her feel like a skank; leadership of the Dark Daughters, with the responsibility of removing the taint from Aphrodite's past leadership; and a nagging feeling that something is not quite right about her mentor, High Priestess Neferet.

Zoey became more real, as she makes hard choices and sometimes wrong ones, like the decision to keep her bond with Heath. I had an easier time being in Zoey's head this time around, and when Stevie Rae died, I felt shaken up.

However, so much of the story takes place inside Zoey's own head that most of the supporting cast, again, is left looking sort of hollow and flat. The worst, though, by far, was Erik. For someone who Zoey is supposed to be so close to, almost nothing is spoken. There is nothing about his family, his hometown, his past, anything except that he wins Shakespeare competitions, likes dork movies like Zoey, and is very jealous. His jealousy, coupled with the fact that almost no other character qualities are stated about him, makes him a very unattractive character, and more and more I wondered why she was with him.

A lot of questions were left at the end of this one, like what exactly Neferet was doing with the undead fledglings, and why they had become undead in the first place. Also, the status of Zoey's relationship with Aphrodite, as well as Aphrodite's motivations for anything, was a huge question mark for me.

I liked the book, but it felt uneven to me; the hollow characterizations detracted from the strength of the storyline and the tension and anxiety of Zoey's choices.

In the popular teenage vampire genre the House of Night series stands out. The main character is strong, and rolls with the punches. She doesn't back down, and she doesn't think she's underserving of all good forture (which I like most). If you're going to read a teenage vamp novel, THIS is the series.

In the second book Zoey has finally settled in at The House of Night. She's got great friends, a boyfriend and she's the new leader of the school's top group. But there's something strange going on, she's seeing old students; students whose bodies rejected the change into becoming a vampire and are supposed to be dead. They don't look like they use to either, they're all pale white, their eyes glow red, nails are like claws and they smell like death. One of the new "ghosts" as she thought they were is her best friend at school, what's going on and who's behind it.

Loved this one as much as Marked and am looking forward to Chosen in March. Cried a little during the book, but it is well worth the read.

I have really enjoyed this world and this book was not a let down. The characters are interesting and I look forward to getting to know them better.