To Be or Not To Be a Saint

Where do you go from the ultimate sacrifice? A girl takes on the curse of the Urbat (werewolf) herself in order to save her boyfriend, and then where do they go? Happily ever after? Oh, I think not! After such a lovely ending, things are bound to get ugly... And in The Lost Saint by Bree Despain, they certainly get ugly.

Grace Divine saved her boyfriend Daniel from the wolf inside him, but not before her brother, Jude, bit an infected her. Saving Daniel may well have damned Grace, but she and Daniel decide to embrace her wolfiness and begin training immediately. If Grace can use her new powers for good, then maybe she can overcome the curse and keep the wolf from taking her over. When Jude begins sending cryptic messages to Grace, things begin to go south quickly.

Grace is doing a community service project for school, and she meets a young guy named Talbot. Talbot quickly reveals he is also an Urbat and as the Last Saint Moon, he is taking up his family's mission to rid the world of evil: demons, vampires, and other ickly uglies that go bump in the night. Since Daniel has been avoiding her and has stopped her training, she can't resist the lure of fighting bad guys with Talbot. It makes her feel like a real super hero. But things aren't quite as easy and carefree as they seem. Jude keeps warning her not to trust anyone, but she doesn't know if he can be trusted either. When she is kidnapped, the truth is revealed about who is really after Grace, and it is a twist you never see coming!

This was a good follow-up to the first story. It is much darker with a lot of other stuff coming out of the woodwork, but sometimes the action gets lost amongst Grace's pining for Daniel and self-doubt. While I am fine with a little introspection, sometimes it is better to keep enough going on outside the character's head in order to keep the reader interested. The story would have been better if it was a little shorter by way of reducing Grace's constant self-analysis.

I liked the delve into the deeper supernatural in this book as well. There was a cursory discussion of different demons and their abilities, but not enough for my taste. I would have loved to hear more about the creepers Talbot and Grace keep hunting. This is a good sequel, so if a reader liked the first book, this should be a hit, too. Maybe the next book will venture even further.