This novel follows Cora Covington also know as The Blade of Hineport. Cora is a rare blood witch, who has been trained to be lethal in an attempt to keep any of her purple blood from ever spilling which will reveal her secret and make her a target for the entire paranormal world. Thus Cora has aligned herself with Damien, the vampire overlord of Hineport, a city crawling with the demon populations.
Cora has never failed Damien, until she is sent after a high school student on the other side of the bridge, Vince. Vince is a Nephilim, at least in part. The Nephilim are a race of angels, they practice light magic and Cora has no understanding as to why Damien wants Vince dead. Though it's not her job to ask questions, and now that she has failed her first attempt her life depends on infiltrating Vince's high school and finishing the job before he reaches 18 and becomes too powerful.
As Cora infiltrates Vince's school posing as a fellow student, she begins to further question Damien's motive and how to use the situation to her advantage to finally break ties with Damien and save herself.
To say I couldn't put this novel down is a little bit of an understatement...I was hooked. While I am a fan of anything paranormal, I've been burning out really quickly on fantasy recently given how much I've been focusing in that genre. This more than held my currently scattered attention. I finished it in less than 24 hours and was sad that it was over.
Perez's writing draws you in and holds you at the edge of your seat. You want Cora to reach over to the light inside her and yet you want her to be the cold blooded killer she's meant to be. You are drawn along with Cora as she struggles and grapples with her own conscious, with the exhaustion of being constantly hunted.
I definitely appreciated the fact that we were made to hate Damien fairly quickly into the book. I hate when I come to love a character only to find out they are the bad guy. It's so disappointing. This was almost instantaneously, he's the villain, got it, moving on. Though I can see why Cora trusted him for so long, until that moment he seemed perfectly fine.
In an interesting contrast. Hector was a jerk from moment one. You knew he was up to something shady, you just weren't sure what. I suppose anyone who treats certain people as outcasts and lesser than automatically becomes a shady jerk in my mind so maybe it was just me. But I was completely unsurprised when we found Hector to be the even bigger villain of the story. Though I did not predict exactly what happened with Vince's mom, I knew Hector was somehow involved, given that she was his predecessor and he was such a hateful little gremlin there's no way he could have been uninvolved.
I did feel bad for Vince, though I bonded with Cora from moment one, so unfortunately for him, I more cared what life had forced Cora to become, than what Cora had almost done to him. What can I say, I have a soft spot for the underdog who managed to grow some teeth and fight back.
I loved this book! I want a second one!
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