Review: Envy by Elizabeth Miles

This is the 2nd book in a series, friends. Spoilers from book 1 are floating about. Please read my review of Fury by Elizabeth Miles (book 1) or scroll all the way down to read my review on a post-it with non-spoilery thoughts.

Book Title/Author: Envy by Elizebeth Miles (The Fury Trilogy #2)
Publisher/Year: : Simon & Schuster-  September 4th 2012
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal Fiction
Series: Yes, this is book #2 in the series.
Other Books From Author: Fury by Elizabeth Miles (book one in this series)

Amazon| Goodreads | Elizabeth Miles’ Website

After the death of popular football star Chase & making a deal with the Furies so they didn’t harm her very best friend JD, Em thinks she’s dealt with the Furies for now so she pours herself into learning about them & why they might be in Ascension and tries to make amends with Gabby and a cold JD who is shutting her out. Meanwhile, the new girl in town, Skylar, has her own secrets. Now that she’s living with her grandmother, she’s free of her alcoholic mother and her perfect older sister and she can forge her own path to popularity and be everything her family never thought she’d be — at any cost. Luckily for Skylar, in addition to popular Gabby who has befriended her & helped her get the ins to Acension’s social scene, she’s got three beautiful sisters who want to help her out…or so she thinks.

I’ll start with this — Envy was fan-freaking-tastic and really made me love this series more! I always am nervous to start the second book in a trilogy for fear of the dreaded second-book-in-the-series syndrome. You know…where nothing really happens at all and it just sets up for the rest of the series. If I’m being honest, Envy, the sequel to Fury, unfortunately does have some symptoms of  this Second Book syndrome but doesn’t necessarily fail because of it or SUFFER fully from it..for me at least.

Especially when compared with Fury, it seems like there isn’t much happening in this sequel. It just doesn’t have that same pacing or action that I personally felt with Fury. It also didn’t feel nearly as dark or creepy. That was one of the biggest things I loved about Envy — it was so dark and creepy and the Furies really were something out of a horror movie for me. Envy seemed like it was a lot more high school politics and Mean Girl-esque plotlines until the middle/end.

A lot of that “feeling like the sinister & dark factor wasn’t there” feeling was, I think, because the plotline with Em revolved around her researching and learning more about the Furies in the beginning with not too many appearances of them and a lot of the Furies BIG appearances that revealed things were from the middle to the end. And the new character Skylar, the new girl in town & the alternating point of view in this one, has a very catty and conniving role and her dealings with the Furies are very different than how we’ve seen them.

Envy makes up for the “symptoms” with its compulsive readability and some really great characters both new and old. Skylar, well she just BROUGHT the high school drama with her desperate need to fit in, be pretty and popular and get her way no matter the cost. Speaking of her, I really loved Skylar’s alternating point of view in contrast with Em’s. She was incredibly compelling though I wanted to bitch slap her for a good chunk of this book but it was evident as we learned more about her that there was more that meets the eye. I really loved her chapters to be honest. I couldn’t put them down. Em became a lot more likeable this time around and DREA.  Love Drea!

Once I finished the book and was thinking about how it lacked the creep factor,  I realized that, all along in the beginning, I DID feel kind of unsettled — like there was something eerie just lurking in the shadows. When I watched the Furies toy with Skylar, I just was sitting there waiting with bated breath knowing what kind of destruction they caused before on people’s lives. When Em was researching the Furies and things seemed calm to her, I was waiting for them to strike again and even more  brutally. I was waiting for her to uncover something terrifying or unsettling. It’s what drove me to read faster and faster. So while the creepy factor may not have ultimately felt as intense in the beginning, it’s there! It just lingered throughout and them BAM..you better sleep with a nightlight on because IT GETS REAL. And the ending. OH MY. OH MY. Miles’ writes this in such a way that you just keep plowing through to find out WHEN the you know what will hit the fan.

But I will say, thumbs down to the whole Crow storyline. How random is he?

Envy is an excellent follow-up to Elizabeth Miles’ Fury. It’s poised to be read compulsively and has this  underlying creepy tone that ebbs and flows but is more subtle through most of the novel when compared with Fury. It does have a slight case of Second-Book-Syndrome because there is a lot less that actually happens in this novel nor do we find out anything groundbreaking BUT this isn’t a second book that FULLY succumbs to the Second Book Syndrome. Definitely an underrated series I’d like to see more people pick up if they are looking for TRULY creepy and more horror-filled paranormal that breathes new life into the mythology based Furies but delicately so as it remains true to the vengeful nature of the Furies. It’s not preachy, it’s  full of flawed characters whom you might hate but they become sympathetic when contrasted with the judgement the Furies are hellbent on bringing down on them for being just that — flawed people who make big mistakes. Oh HEY and it’s not all focused on a romance.

Let’s talky talk: Have you read this series?  Interested in it? What are some other books you’ve read that deal with revenge and justice for wrongdoings?