Title: The Mephisto Covenant
Goodreads summary:
Sasha is desperate to find out who murdered her father. When getting the answer means pledging her soul to Eryx, she unlocks a secret that puts her in grave danger—Sasha is Anabo, a daughter of Eve, and Eryx’s biggest threat.
A son of Hell, immortal, and bound to Earth forever, Jax looks for redemption in the Mephisto Covenant—God’s promise he will find peace in the love of an Anabo. After a thousand years, he’s finally found the girl he’s been searching for: Sasha.
With the threat of Eryx looming, Jax has to keep Sasha safe and win her over. But can he? Will Sasha love him and give up her mortal life?
Review:
I hate writing bad reviews. HATE IT. Because I’m very aware that the author has accomplished a difficult feat: writing a book in the first place. It’s more than I’ve done and I have to respect any published author for that. It’s not as though they sat down and said “Today, I’m going to write a book that will make Jen want to throw it across the room.”
But unfortunately that’s what happened here.
Obviously from the preface, I didn’t care for The Mephisto Covenant, but fair warning: HERE THERE BE SNARK.
The premise of The Mephisto Covenant sounded really interesting to me. It seems like angels are the new craze and I haven’t read many books depicting them, so I was curious about this one.
The first few pages had me really interested with Sasha suspicious of her mother’s boyfriend and trying to solve the mystery behind her father’s death. If the book had been about that a little bit more I might have been able to get behind it.
Instead, Sasha is quickly lured into the den of the Ravens, a pseudo-cult that worships Eryx. And Jax, a Mephisto, saves her.
But because Sasha is Anabo, when Jax smells her, he’s basically in luuuuuuv.
Personally I have never known a smell that powerful. I love the scent of Curve for Men as much as the next girl, but it’s never convinced me that I am meant for the guy for eternity. The Insta-love (just add destiny!) effect was probably my biggest pet peeve in this book.
It was hard to respect Sasha when internal dialogue called someone the “town ho” and her outer dialogue responded to news with a solemn “That’s heavy.” Has anyone outside of surfer-dudes used that expression since the seventies? Then there’s this awkward bit where Sasha does this “I like Jax, no I don’t, no I shouldn’t, but I want him, but he’s leaving, but I like him, no I don’t…” thing that just irritated me beyond belief. (To be fair, for his part, Jax had an equally annoying “I love Sasha, I want to do Sasha, I know better than Sasha, I am so wise, but woe is me for we cannot have the sexy times, and she will never stay conmigo’ thing)
And let’s not forget the sex scene, which was surprisingly graphic for a YA book. Graphic enough that if the characters weren’t teenagers attending high school, I’d say that this didn’t belong in the YA category. I had a clue that things were going to take that turn when before the book was even halfway through Jax describes Sasha’s “perfect pink nipples.” (And then I vommed in my mouth because it was so awkward)
Which he saw because he popped into the dressing room without permission while she was changing. Which is totally okay. And going on her Facebook without permission to look at her wall and private messages is okay too. Because, y’know, it’s for her own good.
You guys, honestly I had so many problems with this book, I think I’m just going to bullet some of them (already went over a few but…)
- Inconsistencies
- Graphic sex in YA
- Insta-love
- Gratuitous assumptions that all members of a gender think the same way
- Man knows best mentality
Rating: 1/5. If it wasn’t for wanting to finish it for a more accurate review, there is absolutely no way I would have finished reading this book. However, I can see it being pretty popular because Insta-love tends to be. I see fans of Twilight, The Immortals series, and paranormal insta-love in general liking this, but it was absolutely not for me.
FTC disclosure: I received a copy of The Mephisto Covenant from the publisher for free via NetGalley. This in no way affected my review.
The Mephisto Covenant is available now.
