Review: Hidden by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Hidden

Author: P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Series: House of Night, #10

Summary: AT LAST, ZOEY HAS WHAT SHE WANTED:

The truth is out. Neferet's evil has been exposed, and the High Council is no longer on her side-but she's far from done wreaking havoc in the vampyre world. First, a mysterious fire ravages the stables. Then, Neferet makes a devastating move that will test them all.

With the seeds of distrust sown and Darkness breeding chaos at the House of Night, everyone must band together-but that's proving to be more difficult than ever before. The twins are barely speaking and the House of Night's former enemy, Kalona, has now become their warrior, pushing their trust to the limit. To top it off, Zoey is pretty darn sure she might be losing her mind. She saw something when she looked at Aurox through the Seer Stone that she can hardly explain to herself, let alone her friends. Is it possible that Heath has come back in a different  form? Is that why Zoey's so intrigued by Aurox, when it's so obvious that he's dangerous? And who would believe her if she told them? Zoey knows that following her instinct about Aurox might be just what they need to defeat evil . . . but if she's wrong, it could cause the destruction of those closest to her.

With the tension at a breaking point and friendships on the line, can the nerd herd come together to stop the spread of Darkness before it's too late?

Review

NOTE: This review contains spoilers of the previous books in the House of Night series. If you do not wish to be blind-sided by events within this series, I suggest skipping this review.

It's been a while since I've read a House of Night book and I was both nervous and excited about continuing on with this series. I am intrigued by the storyline. I love the idea of a vampyre school where the vampires are marked with an affinity for one of the elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and Spirit. I also love how we have a wonderful antagonist who I absolutely love to hate: Neferet. She's incredibly vile and disturbing and one of the more evil villians I've seen in a book series. And throughout Hidden we get a good look at Neferet and all of her evilness along with one of the more devastating plans we've seen throughout the series and we wonder, how on earth is Zoey going to save the day this time?

Throughout the book Neferet does everything within her power to corrupt the minds of the vampyre High Council, wreak havoc within the House of Night by splitting up the nerd herd (Zoey and her closest friends and allies), as well as manipulate the human population in Tulsa into thinking that she departed the House of Night because of its recent corruption and fall into Darkness, when in fact it was she who was corrupt and did the bad deeds, causing it to look like the House of Night could not function under their new High Priestess of Death Thanatos. But Thanatos, Zoey and all her friends are a step ahead of Neferet this time and for a good portion of the book it would seem that Neferet is falling from Darkness' grace. Then finally Neferet does the unthinkable and all hell breaks loose. Not to mention there is a betrayal by one of Zoey's closest friends that could actually be the downfall of the entire bring-Neferet-down-once-and-for-all operation. Oddly enough, the one person who could be their salvation in all this madness is Neferets vessel made from Darkness, Aurox: the one who killed one of their professors and tried to kill Zoey and Rephaim. It's easy to see why he isn't exactly trustworthy, but they can't afford to take any chances in such a dire situation. Zoey and the nerd herd have to put their faith in several people on their do not trust list. And they replace their betrayer with someone who I consider to be much more worthy of the position.

One of my favorite things about this book is the character building. We see many different sides of the story this time by going into the minds of Neferet, Kalona, Rephaim, Zoey, Aurox, Shaunee and more, including Zoey's grandma. Each of these characters are struggling with their own desires and demons and we see several of them change (many for the better) throughout the course of the book. I still have a love/hate relationship with Zoey; sometimes I like her and think she's a commendable protagonist and other times I can't stand her and want to smack her for being so stupid. She makes a lot of childish and irresponsible mistakes but she always seems to bounce back from them and it is the picking herself back up that I like about her. She's never down for too long, and I'm hoping that she doesn't make a mistake where the whole Aurox thing is concerned.

The one thing I'm going to mention that I don't like (which I've mentioned in my House of Night reviews before) is the superficial dialogue. Most of the time while reading the nerd herds conversations I feel like I'm reading something that a child has written, some of the responses are meaningless and could have been left out. Things like "yep!" or "mmhmm" are unnecessary agreement responses and feel immature. The mean, sarcastic, bitchy comments got to me as well, but thankfully all of this seems to have lessened since the beginning of the series which I am very relieved to see. There is more storyline and less needless and meaningless dialogue. I'm looking forward to the next book much more than I was this one. The series seems to be getting better and better as it goes along so if you're reading this and stopped reading after the first book or so because of the bad writing, I would suggest giving it another try.

Oh, and I'm still team Stark all the way.

I rate this book: