Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins
Release Date: May 1, 2012
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: LAPL
Rating: 
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What if there were teens whose lives literally depended on being bad influences?
This is the reality for sons and daughters of fallen angels.
Tenderhearted Southern girl Anna Whitt was born with the sixth sense to see and feel emotions of other people. She’s aware of a struggle within herself, an inexplicable pull toward danger, but Anna, the ultimate good girl, has always had the advantage of her angel side to balance the darkness within. It isn’t until she turns sixteen and meets the alluring Kaidan Rowe that she discovers her terrifying heritage and her willpower is put to the test. He’s the boy your daddy warned you about. If only someone had warned Anna.
Forced to face her destiny, will Anna embrace her halo or her horns? – Goodreads
Review:
With very few exceptions (Unearthly, Angelfall), angel books are usually a big miss with me, but Wendy Higgins’ Sweet Evil was middle of the road.
I’ll start off with what I did like:
• The addictive quality of the book. Seriously, this book was like candy and I read it in one sitting which is pretty rare for me nowadays.
• The angel mythology. It’s so different from other YA angel books so thumbs up for originality!
• Wendy Higgins wasn’t afraid of making her world dark. Perhaps I’m just too used to the fluff and such, but I was really surprised by some of the themes and actions of Nephilim in Sweet Evil. They made sense for the world she created, though, so I’m glad she didn’t shy away from that.
• The chemistry between Anna and Kaiden was pretty good. I did have some issues, but the UST was definitely there.
My dislikes are a little difficult to put into words because, yes, I did enjoy reading the book quite a bit, but I didn’t love it.
• I found the characters to be grating at times — especially Anna who was annoyingly naive and suffered from the always eyeroll inducing “I’m beautiful but I don’t know it” character flaw.
• Kaiden is a typical bad boy (he even has a British accent!), and I’m not too into those personally, but at least his “badness” had a reason. So, not all that much to DISLIKE here, really, I just wasn’t super into him.
• Patti, Anna’s mother, is a trip and I really don’t understand what was going on in her head. At all.
• The other side characters had interesting backstories, but as characters themselves, I found them to be flat. That sounds really odd, I know, but I guess I liked their larger roles in the angel mythology more than I liked them as individuals? We’ll stick with that.
I will read the next book because this one was so addictive, but I do wish the character development had been expanded. I’ll be curious to see how Wendy Higgins handles that in the next installment.
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Okay, I’m just big on angel books either, but you’ve got me curious about this one. And I admit it, I’m a sucker for a bad boy. ;)
Most of the reviews I’ve read for this book have been on either end of the spectrum, so it;’s nice to get something a little more balanced. Angel books can be pretty hit and miss for me too, but I’m glad to hear the ideas here were at least original. It’s a shame you had some trouble with the characters tough.
Brilliant review, Steph!
I have this book on the shelves and I was planning to read it soon, so I’m happy to hear you liked it! I always love original twists to a popular subject and Kaiden sounds like a good bad-boy. Great review!
Mel@thedailyprophecy.
I don’t read a lot of angel books either, but this sounds pretty interesting. I’m curious about meeting Kaiden, because a lot of people seem to really like him!
Angel books are usually a miss for me too. I was kind of curious about this one because it did seem a bit darker, but I still don’t think it would be for me
This is one that I’ve been thinking about reading for a while. I’m into dark and bad boys, but naive characters tend to annoy me. And also, I refuse to believe that there are beautiful people who don’t know it. You know it. Seriously, you know it.