Xoe by Sara C. Roethle

Xoe: or Vampires, and Werewolves, and Demons, Oh My! by Sara C. Roethle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A young woman, Xoe, is starting her junior year in high school. She has three obvious friends (as in, she mentions she has a few friends and no more, but is slow in mentioning who they are; in such a way that at first I thought she only was friends with Allison and Lucy, but then her next-door-neighbor Brian got into the mix as well - potentially there are more 'friends' out there).

During the school day a new student intrudes into their little circle (that being Lucy, Allison and Xoe - but not Brian). A young man named Dan. Allison and Lucy find him attractive and give off signs of lusting after him. Allison, the bolder of the lot, wanders over, grabs Dan, and drags him back to their table (I should have mentioned somewhere along the line that this is all happening at lunch time - well first meeting). Xoe, though, finds Dan to be super creepy. What with his constant staring. And general . . . creepiness.

Allison invites Dan to come along on the groups shopping trip, though now it's morphed into movies. Dan goes along. His creepiness rises higher when Xoe wanders off to get some popcorn, and he confronts her. Grabbing her arm roughly and glaring at her, demanding to know 'her game' (or whatever he said). She's confused and annoyed - especially as it's been Dan doing all the staring all the past week and stuff.

Group outing continues. Eventually the group head to eat food - Lucy and Dan traveling in one car, Allison and Xoe in another. Which is important to note. For reasons. Eventually the night ends. everyone goes home, sleeps, goes to school, stares moodily at each other and are very emo and stuff. heh, no. When Dan dropped Lucy off at her place he scratched her arm. More like clawed it. And his hand looked like a wolf's paw. Lucy, naturally, is freaking out.

One thing leads to another and both Lucy and Xoe, independently of each other, come to the belief that werewolves are involved (with Lucy believing that Dan is one, and Xoe assuming that since werewolves are fictional, that Dan believes that he is a werewolf and stuff).

The point is driven home, though, along the way that things are weird. For various others come out of the woodwork. Vampires, werewolves, and demons. I'm suddenly being vague, I know, on purpose.

Interesting story. The level of maturity and 'plodding along' works when you consider everyone is around 16/17 years of age. Would work less well if everyone was older. So . . that young adult thingie works to it's own advantage. Or something like that.

Curious how the rest of the series unfolds.

Rating: 3.8

December 31 2016



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