Crush: Crave, Book 2

Readers unbothered by less-than-polished storytelling who like a bit of melodrama spicing up their romantic-fantasy soup will enjoy this sequel full of young, powerful, and troubled paranormals. Katmere Academy trains witches, werewolves, vampires, and dragons, and now they have their first gargoyle with Grace, the main character. When Grace wakes up and figures out what she is, here's where Crush could have taken the standard "origin story" turn and told us all what the heck this means. It doesn't, which is part of the reason why this sequel doesn't satisfy as it should. Instead author Tracy Wolff spends oodles of time on bickering matches between Grace and Hudson, the scary-seeming vampire stuck in her head. He's mean, he's nice again, he helps her survive, then he ignores her, and the whole time Grace is ignoring her boyfriend, Jaxon. Brooding, intriguing Jaxon from Crave is a major reason readers will show up for Book 2, and here he's mostly just whiny as he waits for Grace's attention.

The last third of Crush is full of action and takes us out of Grace's overstuffed head and relationship woes just enough with some dramatic twists and turns. Grace, finally the hero of her own story, has to go it alone in a trial against paranormals who all want to kill her. The trial in a stadium in front of the whole school goes on and on for chapters (you get the sense that Wolff doesn't know how far 10 yards is on a playing field) and could have been cut way back. But melodrama fans are rewarded if they make it to the very end with quite the cliffhanger.