REVIEW: Demon Kissed (Demon Kissed,#1) by H.M. Ward

Demon Kissed by H.M. Ward

Publication Date: April 15th 2011

Publisher: Laree Bailey Press

Paperback, 326 pages

The Valefar boy tricked Ivy Taylor into kissing him, but he took much more than a kiss - he stole her soul and left her within inches of death. By surviving, Ivy is drawn into the conflict between the Martis and the Valefar. The war between these two immortal forces has raged for millennia without distraction. Until now.


Ivy is an anomaly-she is the only person who has ever walked away from a demon kiss alive. Her survival gives her unique and deadly abilities. Too powerful to ignore, Ivy is a threat to both armies. These two ancient enemies will stop at nothing to kill the seventeen-year-old.


Surviving is nothing new for headstrong Ivy, but her survival has never depended on another person before. This time it does. And if she misplaces her trust, she's dead. To her horror, she starts falling in love at the worst possible time-with the enemy. He appears to be protecting her. But she can't be certain if he is trying to help her, or help himself to her power. For Ivy, trusting the right person is the difference between love and survival, or a deadly demon kiss.

I'm afraid that Demon Kissed was not exactly the book for me...Certainly the premise of this book sounded exactly like something I would enjoy,having read it,well,I can't say I enjoyed Demon Kissed half as much as I expected.

My main problem with this book was the writing style for two reasons,and one of them might actually be my fault but then agian, I'm not so sure about it...
Let me elaborate.One reason I didn't like the writing style was that especially at the beggining of this book,there were many repetitions of the same phrases and words.And I'm not even talking about the typos,which unfortunately where many...I mean I finished reading one sentence and not long after that I would reread something similar.That threw me off completely.It wasn't some kind of editing mistake or a typo as I said earlier, it was just a repetition of the same sentence written in slightly different words (well,that actually is an editing mistake,cause it could be easily fixed but you know what I mean...).
Anyway,after a while I came over that fact,I got used to it and it didn't bother me as much as in the beggining,but the damage was done...I was a bit tired and couldn't completely focus on the story.

My second problem,was the story itself and the way it was written.And here is why I think that might be my personal problem and not a fault of the book itself...As I have already said in the past,English is not my first language,so whenever there is something I don't really get,or I have some gaps in the story,I'm always afraid that it may be my fault and not the story's.Although I don't encounter that problem really often,I'm always wondering...
The storyline of Demon Kissed,although really good and clever and something I would immensely enjoy in any other case,failed to appeal to me cause throughout the whole book I felt that it was all over the place...Things kept happening all the time with no apparent explanation, just to serve the plot.In some cases,there were given some explanations but really late in the story and believe me by then the damage was done.But most things just went unexplained.
As for example why oh why every single person surrounding Ivy,especially from her school environment, was either Martis or Valefar (good and bad guys respectively)...Every single person in Ivy's school is a good or a bad guy...And besides the obvious question how they all knew where to gather at once I also wonder for one other thing...Why would some creatures living for millenia,soldiers of an ancient war would spend their time going to school and doing homework!Are they all possessed by some kind of compulsion to go to school?Or did they go there just to be near the heroine and play their part when it's needed according to the plot?The second is most likely the correct guess but still I need a reason.Call me compulsive,but I want the things in the books I read to happen for a reason,silly or not,otherwise I feel like something is missing...

The storyline of Demon Kissed was full of things that happened for no apparent reasons,and the plot though interesting had some rather huge holes...And here is where doubting myself and my knowledge of English language begins.The story had indeed all those holes or I just couldn't grasp all the inner meanings?Since though I can usually discern the motives in almost every book I read,I'm tending to believe that there weren't any inner meanings for my to comprehend and the plot holes are a fact,but I always like to give the benefit of the doubt...

Anyway, as one can guess, because of the things stated above I struggled to finish this book,and by the end I couldn't appreciate neither the constant twists in the story,nor the fact that Ivy was a quite well developed character.But just Ivy...The rest characters, were just surrounding her.

So,although the story of Demon Kissed,no matter what,was interesting,I can't bring myself to continue with this series.The ending was a bit cliffhangerish and even though I'm wondering how things will wrap up,I won't pick up the sequel...