Phew, last review of the week and now I can spend my weekend wracking my brain for how to keep up these reviews when my life seems to get busier and busier....
The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer
Mia's life was a satisfying, happy one in America until an old demon hell-bent on destroying her family possesses her for several, terrifying days. Thankfully not all connections with her extended family have been lost and her demon-slaying cousins come to her aide and take her back with them to Italy to keep her safe from the demon until they can figure out a better way to protect her.
This is a pretty solid, mid-tier YA novel. There's nothing odious about it but there's nothing brilliant about it either; the characters are solidly realistic but don't seem to go through a lot of character growth. Part of it is because this is a rather slow book, there are good reasons for why Mia is kept isolated from almost everything for the majority of the story, she's also mature enough to respect these reasons, but it means that nothing truly happens until the last third of the story. I mean that both in terms of plot advancement (the summary for the second book in this series looks nearly identical to this one) or for character development. The story is in a bit of a bind since not only do we meet Mia after her initial possession (ie, there is no real "before and after") but she's a quiet, "likable" teen to start with so there's not much that she needs to "change".
So, while this book did convince me that I need to visit Milan myself someday, with so little actually happening in this book I don't think I will be picking up the sequel to see if anything actually happens there instead.
