'Defiance' Strange Angels #4 by Lili St CROW

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Hey Sucker. It's showtime.

The Real World is a frighting place. Just ask sixteen-year-old orphan Dru Anderson, a tough girl who has taken on her fair share of bad guys. She's armed, dangerous, and not going down with a fight. So it's gonna take her a while to figure out who she can trust . . .

Dru Anderson has always been a good listener. She listened to her dad, but had to gun him down when he turned zombie. She listened to the Order, but got nothing but lied to in return. She listened to Christophe, but still lost the only friend she had left.

Time to buckle up, boys and girls. Dru Anderson is done listening. From here on out, she'll face the King of the Vampires on her own terms. And if the Order has a problem with that, they can kiss their sweet little svetocha goodbye.

DRU ANDERSON'S NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK.

BUT SHE SHOULD BE.

‘Defiance’ picks up where ‘Jealousy’ left off on a nail-biting cliff-hanger. Now that sixteen-year-old Dru's worst fears have come true and Sergej has kidnapped her best friend Graves, she'll have to go on a suicidal rescue mission to bring him back in one piece. That is, if she can put all of Christophe's training to good use, defeat her mother's traitor, Anna, once and for all, and manage to survive another day...

This is the fourth book in Lili St. Crow’s ‘Strange Angels’ series.

So many questions and only two books left! I will put your mind at ease and say, yes, the biggest cliff-hanger of ‘Jealousy’ has a resolution, but there is still much about the ‘Strange Angels’ series that is shrouded in mystery . . .

I love ‘Strange Angels’. This is a dark, kick-ass young adult paranormal series. Lili St. Crow writes violence, profanity and a main character that is at odds with her inner demons and great expectations. Dru is not perfect; she is magnificently flawed and emotionally broken. But in ‘Defiance’, she completely and utterly dominates. She comes into her own and embraces the woman she is becoming, and the girl she used to be;

How would Dad have dealt with all this? He hadn’t even told me the most basic things about myself. About who or what I was, who he was, who Mom had been . . . but I hadn’t needed to know, had I? I'd known everything there was to know when I was his helper. His little girl.

Daddy’s little princess. Who had emptied a clip into the shambling corpse that used to be her father.

Of all the things that will fuck you up in the head, that had to be in a class all its own.

In the past Dru has been on the back-foot. From having to kill her father, to learning about the svetocha and The Order, Dru has been reacting throughout the series, and on the defence instead of offense. Well that all ends right here, right now. In ‘Defiance’ Dru shakes off the shackles of her past, and takes control of her life and future . . . and her transformation is glorious!

Fury boiled up inside me, pushing aside the pain. The hunger fed on the rage, feasted on it, and this time I was a clear glass girl full of red wrath, but it didn’t own me. I stood in the middle of all that anger, a ribbon of cold steel inside me, and felt something inside me shift like a key clicking over in a lock.

As to the love triangle . . . I don’t want to give anything away! Grr. For those of you who thought Dru had been a little bit naively oblivious to Graves and Christophe’s interest in her, I can say that in this instalment she is confronted with the conundrum of her emotions. It’s all lain bare, in heart-on-sleeve, cheek-cracking glory . . . There are some hot, tense moments in ‘Defiance’ that will have both Team Christophe and Team Graves cheering (and squealing!).

There’s only one book left in the ‘Strange Angels’ series (‘Reckoning’, coming out November this year!) so it should come as no surprise that ‘Defiance’ ends on a cliff-hanger. Though I don’t know that it’s an overly steep cliff . . . fans should be anticipating this curve-ball, but will still be rabid to know how it impacts the finale.

Sorry if that’s frustratingly cryptic!

‘Defiance’ is a wonderful lead into what I am sure will be one hell of an explosively wonderful finale in Lil St. Crow’s ‘Strange Angels’ series. Dru is coming into her own; she is embracing the lies of her past and the violence in her future. Fantastic!

5/5