Book Review: Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Book: Every Other Day
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Published: 2012
Source: Local Library

Half the time, Kali D'Angelo is a normal, if lonely, teenage girl. She goes to school, she comes home, she avoids talking with her dad. The other half, she's a demon hunter, with supernatural reflexes, superfast healing abilities, and an urge to find all the things that go bump in the night and kill them dead. She doesn't know why or how she makes this switch at sunrise, human one day and supernatural killing machine the next, only that she does.

But on one of her human days, she realizes that popular-girl Bethany Davis has a deadly little parasite. Chupacabras drink all your blood within a few days, and Bethany doesn't have much time left. Kali takes the gamble that she can survive to the next sunrise, and coaxes the parasite to jump over to her instead.

But oh, there's so much more to this than a simple bloodsucking demon. Before she knows it, Kali is fighting bigger and badder things than ever before. Even having allies--Bethany, "little bit psychic" Skylar and her brother Elliot, and a mysterious voice in her head only known as Zev--doesn't mean that Kali will get any of them out alive.

When this first came out, I actually requested it from NetGalley. Unfortunately, it expired before I got to it. (Everyone else who uses NetGalley knows the pain of this.) That's why I was so excited to read this. Now that I have? Aw, man, I wish I had read this a year and a half ago!

I'm probably not the first person to make the Buffy comparison, but I'll do so anyway. Combine supernatural beasties, a tough and snarky demon killer, and Ominous Bad Guys, Inc, well, the name of the Slayer is going to be invoked. Does this book stand up to the comparison? Yes, I think so.

What I loved best was that the most important relationships in this book weren't with boys. They were with other girls. Sweet and chirpy Skylar and bitch-queen Bethany form Kali's Scoobies, and the boys (and most of the potential romance, triangular or not) are firmly on the back burner.

While the end seems to make it clear that this is a standalone, I wouldn't mind reading a sequel.