White Hot Kiss (The Dark Elements, #1)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

[EBookObsessed]

An enjoyable and entertaining Young Adult story.

Layla is a half-gargoyle/half-demon. She was found in an orphanage as a child and taken in by the gargoyles, who act as Wardens protecting humans from evil (i.e. demons…and other spooky stuff). As a half-demon, Layla doesn’t exactly fit in in the Warden household and not everyone is happy to have her around. Layla has inherited some abilities from her demon mother, one allows her to see souls, which makes it easier to pick out the soulless demons around town and mark them for the Wardens to pick off later. But not all of those abilities are beneficial to Layla since she is also drawn to the most pure souls and wants to suck them out of people with a kiss. She did this accidentally as a child which is what brought her to the attention of the gargoyles.

As with any good young adult book, the story sets us up with a love triangle. Seventeen-year-old Layla has a crush on her slightly, older gargoyle friend, Zayne. Layla believes her feelings are unrequited, not only because Zayne treats her like a little sister, but it is expected that Zayne will mate with a full-blooded gargoyle female — and there is that whole sucking Zayne’s soul out if she kissed him problem.

Enter the new boy in school, Roth, who turns out to be a demon. Roth has come to town from down south–way, way down south–to try to stop Layla from marking demons to be killed by the Wardens. The main man down under isn’t happy with what she is doing and Roth assures her that if she doesn’t stop, Satan is going to put a price on her head to put a stop to her once and for all. He also tries to get her to understand that just being a demon doesn’t make something evil. Just like humans, and even Wardens, demons have levels of evil from simply mischievous to–yeah, really, really evil.

But that’s not the only reason he is here. He knows that the Wardens raised Layla to be ashamed of her demon side, and he wants her to understand that part of herself and embrace her demon nature, not suppress it. Roth is the first person who doesn’t make Layla feel bad about who she is. He is also the first real, true friend Layla has made outside her Warden household. Problem is that Layla is keeping her budding friendship with this demon a secret from her gargoyle family because she has a feeling that Roth tops to big bad on the demon list and if the Wardens knew he was there, especially hanging around Layla, they would do everything they could to send him back to Hell.

I picked up a copy of White Hot Kiss at the Blogger Conference for the RWA. I took it mostly for a giveaway but after seeing so many glowing reviews, I had to read it for myself. While it is a little predictable and formulaic, it was an enjoyable story. I really liked Roth and his pet snake, Bambi. The only reason I am not continuing with the trilogy simply comes down to being tired of the love triangles and from the descriptions of the other stories, I can guess where we will be going with it. And while there is a formula to the story, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be enjoyable to read. Overall, I simply have too much of a backlog of books to review and the story wasn’t that gripping that I need to set everything else aside to see where it goes.

I would highly recommend it to anyone with teens who enjoy a good paranormal romance.