Hunted: House of Night, #5 -- P.C. & Kristin Cast

HuntedDear Zoey,

First of all, thank you.  Thank you for using the very little self control you possess to keep yourself from yet again using that terrible line about poor Pamela Anderson.  Unfortunately, using your self control there apparently disallowed you from using it anywhere else.  There are spoilers in this letter, so you probably shouldn't let any of your friends read it -- I know they all lived through the events I might mention, but I also know that you lurrrve repeating yourself, so I don't want to spoil your fun.

Okay, let's talk about your self control, shall we?  So.  At the end of Book Four, Loren Blake = dead.  There's one boyfriend down.  Your imprint with Heath?  Gone, due to doing the do with Loren Blake.  Your relationship with Erik?  Down the tubes, also due to the Loren Blake thing.  (Or Loren Blake's thing, ha ha.  Oh, god, I'm starting to sound like you.  And I'm annoyingly repeating things that we both know, so I'm really starting to sound like you.  Moving on.)

So really, by the end of the last book, your love life -- which you complained about incessantly -- was quite a bit less complicated.  So what did you do in Hunted, like, immediately?  Let's think about this for a bit.  Need a hint?  Yep.  I see the look on your face.  You know where I'm going with this, but you need to hear it anyway: 

You realized that you totally have the hots for Kalona, the evil fallen angel, and you think that maybe he might not be so bad after all.  And, shocker of shocks, he totally has the hots for YOU!  (Because every male in your vicinity can't help but have the hots for you, unless they happen to be happily gay.)  And then you get back together with Erik Night!  And re-Imprint with Heath!  And start making out with Stark!  And calling yourself a ho again!  Everything is back to normal, even though Grandma's in a coma and the Raven Mockers are everywhere and the End of the World is Nigh!  WHEEEEE!!!

My advice on the romance front?  Ditch Erik Night immediately.  First of all, he's boring.  The tip-off?  You always describe him as being a Clark Kent/Superman type.  Let me clue you in:  Clark Kent and Superman are powerful, sure.  POWERFULLY LAME.  And he got so sketchily possessive that I really thought he was being... erm... possessed... by Kalona, but apparently that was all him.  So ditch him.  He's a jackass.  Same goes for Heath, but more because he's annoying and talks like an idiot.  (Then again, maybe you guys do have a lot in common...)  Kalona?  Seriously?  Do I have to explain myself here?  And Stark.  Stark's the only one that I actually like.  So you shouldn't go out with him either.  Because he deserves better.

Zoey, I've been much more long-winded about this than I meant to be, which may weaken my argument.  So, to be brief:  So very little happened in Hunted that it could have been told in seventy-five pages TOTAL if you hadn't treated your readers like they all have some horrible combination of terrible ADD and extremely serious short-term memory loss.

Please refrain from using the line "Life isn't a book!" ever again.  You are not, by far, the only person guilty of using it, but it needs to go away for a very, very long time. 

Lastly, next time, please don't hog the spotlight.  Aphrodite and Stevie Rae are much more interesting than you, and they hardly got any screen time at all. 

Sincerely,

Leila

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Previously:

1.  Marked
3.  Chosen
4.  Untamed