Series: Dark World
Release Date: May 27th, 2014
But when a fire demon attacks Paige in detention, she has to admit that things have gotten out of her league. Luckily, the cute new boy in school, Logan Bradley, is a practiced demon slayer-and he isn’t fazed by Paige’s propensity to chat with the dead.
Suddenly, Paige is smack in the middle of a centuries-old battle between warlocks and demons, learning to fight with a magic sword so that she can defend herself. And if she makes one wrong move, she’ll be pulled into the Dark World, an alternate version of our world that’s overrun by demons-and she might never make it home.
• BIPOC characters
• LGBTQIA+ characters
• characters with a disability
And doesn’t address fatphobia
• Killing/murder
• Death
• Bullying
• Girl-hating
• Sex-shaming
• Training to kill
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.
Rating: 4.25/5 stars
The Dark World kicks off like any other YA book, a chat with the heroine’s best friend. It just so happens that this heroine’s BFF is–you know–a ghost. And so we’re quickly introduced to the paranormal theme of the book.
When I finally picked The Dark World up, I went into it having read the blurb a while before, so it took me a little too long to get the fact that Dottie, Paige’s friend, is a ghost. It quickly became apparent when the “mean girls” kept looking at Paige weirdly for talking to nothing (hence her being a ghost)–which I can get because seeing someone seemingly having a legit conversation with no one is weird.
The Dark World took a little while for me to warm up to it, but if Shultz is good at anything, it’s building up the storyline. So, we get to understand the main character, in this case, Paige, fully.
The paranormal elements were quickly revealing themselves when Dottie starts hinting about the other side and also the fact that a demon tried to kill her. But the truly mysterious part of the book, I think, lies with the hero, Logan.
Logan was an oddly refreshing character. He had the demon-slaying skills similar to Jace Herondale (Mortal Instruments). But, he still possessed the romantic prowess of Simon Lewis (Mortal Instruments), meaning that he obviously cared for Paige to some degree, but how much? I think the best conversations between Paige and Logan was when Logan would start to blush and awkwardly stumble along with the conversation. It was cute if a bit frustrating since obviously neither of them have ever heard of the phrase: talk to each other (EYE ROLL).
Overall I loved The Dark World, and Paige and Logan were so cute together! I loved the ending, it was the perfect cliffhanger, yet it didn’t have that NOOOOO effect like I thought it would. And figuring it could’ve ended a very different way, I liked this ending much better.
