Review: Misguided Angel by Melissa de la Cruz

Posted 27 February, 2012 by Heather in Heather, Heather Book Review, Uncategorized / 5 Comments

Misguided Angel (Blue Bloods #5)

(Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble)

by Melissa de la Cruz

(Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Website, Twitter)

Published October 2010 by Hyperion

Book Description (From Goodreads):

[box type=”shadow”]After inheriting the dark Van Alen Legacy, Schuyler fled to Florence with her forbidden love, Jack. Now the two of them must embark on the mission Schuyler was destined to complete: to find and protect the five remaining gates that guard the earth from Lucifer, lord of the Silver Bloods.

Back in New York, Mimi has been elected Regent of a crumbling coven. Struggling with her heartache over the loss of Kingsley and with her overwhelming desire to destroy Jack, she must focus all of her energy on a perilous new threat. Vampires are being abducted and their captors are planning to burn them alive online…for all the world to see. Help arrives in the form of Deming Chen, a Venator from Shanghai, who must untangle the web of deceptions before the killers strike again.

As the young vampires struggle for the survival of the coven, they uncover a deadly secret, a truth first discovered by Schuyler’s mother during the Renaissance but kept buried for centuries. And as the Blue Blood enclave weakens yet further, fate leads Schuyler to a terrible choice that will ultimately map the destiny of her heart.[/box]

My Thoughts:

Continuing my read through of all the available Blue Bloods books in January, I next one I read and am reviewing now is book number five, Misguided Angel. This is the first book that doesn’t switch alternate first person point of views between three different people with each chapter. Instead, the book was broken up into three sections–Mimi Force, Schuyler Van Alen, and newly introduced Blue Blood Deming Chen each get a section to themselves. This made the readability step up a lot in my opinion, but this book was a bunch of filler and moved at a snail’s pace with not much happening.

The first section of the book focuses on Schuyler and Jack Force trying to break away from the European Coven, who have kept them prisoner after Schuyler and Jack sought asylum from the New York Coven after Lawrence Van Alen was murdered in the Rio incident way back in book three, and Schuyler was accused of his murder. They are mainly on the run from the New York Coven now because Jack abandoned his bondmate Mimi while she waited at their bonding ceremony to be with Schuyler instead, and that is punishable by death if Mimi choses to go after Jack. Also, Schuyler and Jack must break away to find the Gate of Promise to complete the Van Alen Legacy as she promised her grandfather and mother.

Meanwhile back in New York, Mimi Force  is the head of a crumbling coven, and the latest scare is a leaked video of a kidnapped vampire that will be killed on a live video feed. Oliver Hazard-Perry, Schuyler’s best-friend/conduit who is also in love with her but gave her up to Jack, must work together with Mimi to discover who is behind the kidnapping and videos before it’s too late. While Mimi is grieving the loss of Kingsley and to a lesser extent her bondmate Jack, she finds a kinship in Oliver who has just lost Schuyler that brings about a softer side of Mimi that you haven’t seen in previous books.

The last section of the book focuses on the new Blue Blood, Deming Chan, a Venator who goes undercover at the school to find who kidnapped the student and posted the videos before the vampire is killed in a live video–exposing the existence of vampires to humans. Deming is a strong vampire who has special skills that make her very good at her job, and this part just seems to introduce her enough so she can be used in future books.

This is the first book in this series that I didn’t really enjoy all that much. The story seemed to drag and there wasn’t that much action. Even though the point of view switching was gone, I almost started to miss it because it would have broken up the long spurts of nothing much happening in the story. This novel seemed to be filler, mainly with moping, heartbroken characters that can’t find anything better to do. I give this one a three.

That being said, I didn’t give up on this series and I read the novella, Bloody Valentine, and the sixth installment, Lost in Time. Look for my reviews next month. Both were much better than Misguided Angel.

Heather

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I'm a PhD chemist who loves sarcasm, music, and books-paranormal, mystery, thriller, suspense, horror, and romance. Most of my free time is spent at the martial arts studio these days--whether practicing Combat Hapkido or reading books while watching my son's Taekwondo classes, or even working up a sweat with Kickboxing for fun. Goodreads

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5 Responses to “Review: Misguided Angel by Melissa de la Cruz”

  1. Frankly I have the first three books in this series but I'm afraid to start them. It seems like this series has become the House of Night Series, one that will just keep going and going without a clear end in sight. Sometimes that is a good thing but sometimes it is a very bad thing.

    Thanks for the great review though, I hope you enjoy the rest of the series.
    My recent post Goodreads Catch-Up Read-a-Thon

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  2. Heather

    Alexa–according to the author's website, the seventh and final book in the first cycle of the Blue Bloods book is due to be released in January 2013. What worries me is the wording "the first cycle"–how long is this series going to be if a cycle is seven books, whose quality isn't so hot in the middle of the cycle? I'll finish up this cycle, but I'm not sure I'll continue with this series since it's proven to be a bit mediocre. Thanks for bringing up such a good point.

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