I hate the House of Night novels

***Warning: Spoilers:***

***Warning: Spoilers:***

***Warning: Spoilers:***

First off, I will admit that the concept of the Vampyre finishing school is really cool. Kudo to the authors. However, I hate the fact that there is no character development, the authors constantly repeat themselves, and how it's boring.

I've read four out of the five books, my library hasn't bought the fifth one yet, and throughout the entire series, there is almost no character development. The Twins, Damien, Erik, Heath, and Jack are so two-dimensional it's sickening. Zoey isn't that much better. If anything, she keeps going back and forth from being little Miss Mary Sue to being a ho. In fact, she even calls herself a ho, almost throughout the entire third book. We get that you're a ho, now do us all a favor and just shut up. Seriously. Or if you don't want to be a ho, stop going out with THREE guys at the same time. And you call Aphrodite a ho. Wow, she gave Erik a blow job at the beginning of book one and that's all we see of her doing anything sexual, other than flirting. Zoey, on the other hand, is sucking face with Heath and Erik at the same time, starts drinking Heath's blood-which causes them to Imprint and make them want to have sex, as well as making out with Loren Blake, one of her professors, behind Erik's back and ends up having sex with him, which breaks the Imprint with Heath. So yes, Zoey, you are a ho.

Another thing about Zoey, or Z, is her Mary-Sueness. What is up with always making the main character disgustingly perfect? Not only can Zoey do no wrong, but when she does, everyone is supporting of her, or it's not that big of a deal. And even when she royally ticks off her friends, within a chapter or two, they're back to being best buds and act like nothing ever happen. Reality check, if you lie to your best friends, make out with two guys behind your boyfriend's back, and then lie about y'all's best friend not really being dead, they won't forgive you in under three days. In fact, they might not forgive you in a month. Life isn't as perfect as these authors make it seem to be.

There are probably only two or three characters that actually have some development. They're Aphrodite, Stevie Rae, and maybe Neferet. Aphrodite is obvious, because you see her as a "hag from hell", as a "skank" and as a abused daughter of her parents. Mind you, when I say abused, I don't mean physical, it's more verbal and mental. Anyways, the reader goes on to see how Aphrodite eventually realizes that there's more to life than just being rude, and even though she tries to deny it, she begins to become part of the "nerdherd" a.k.a Zoey's friends. She refuses to stay a annoying character who's only purpose is to be rude and instead becomes a character who helps move the plot along.

The only reason Stevie Rae has development is because she dies and then comes back again, only this time instead of being her typical, nauseating, cheerful self, she's the usual stereotypical idea of what vampires are supposed to be. Her dilemma is to hang onto her last shreds of humanity long enough for her bff Zoey to help her become "normal" again. Hello? Stevie Rae is undead. Yeah, that's so normal. But Stevie Rae does have some development, and it's pretty cool to see her switch back and forth from psycho land to everything's okey-dokey land.

Neferet's next, and this is where I'm not too certain that she develops. At first she appears to be the most perfect vamprye at the House of Night, and of course it helps that she's the high priestess, but then suddenly she's evil. Where's the transition? Second, why does she turn evil? Huge plot hole there. Nyx says that she turned from her past, but why? There's a lot of gaps, and nowhere in four books did she even cover anything about why she turned.

Moving onward, one of my biggest complaints is how repetitive the authors are. In every single book they find it necessary to summarize what's been happening. Nice thought and all, but we don't need summaries. It's a series, the reader is expected to have read the previous books. In fact, there are plenty of series that don't summarize everything. Lord of the Rings didn't summarize, the Pretty Trilogy by Scott Westerfield didn't summarize, and the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix didn't summarize. You know why? Because it wasn't necessary. If I wanted everything spelled out for me I would go read books for preschoolers. Furthermore, the authors need to learn how to switch up their descriptions. As part of the summarizing, they find it necessary to describe the characters the exact same way, every time. The Twins are always described as a cappuccino girl and a really white girl who instantly bond as soul sisters. Can't we have a bit more original description there? I can practically gloss over the first part of each book because it sounds exactly the same and I loose interest. Last time I checked, you don't want the readers to loose interest. It's kind of bad.

Secondly, I hate their vampyre looks. Yes, vampyres are gorgeous, yes, they're breathtaking, but no, they should not all look the same. Even Twilight differentiated between what the vampires looked like. The only characteristics the vamps in Twilight shared were the eyes, the paleness, the-ugh-sparkle, and the icy-cold hardness of their skin. But they still all looked different. In the House of Night series, they're all the same. It's so annoying. I mean, if you're going to create characters, shouldn't they look somewhat different from each other?

My last point was that the series was boring, and to me it's not so much boring as annoying. Right now I'm just reading them to see if the authors either improve or degenerate even further. I'm not reading these books just for pleasure, though I guess I could say that ranting about them is my pleasure. Wow, that sounded awkward. Anyways, if a series has declined so much to the point that I'm just reading it to bash it, then something's wrong.

Ok, so I lied. My real last point is how aggravating it is that Zoey has to continuously explain everything, even the simple stuff that might have been explained already. It might be hard to believe, but I am not stupid. Having the main character explain everything to me makes me want to throw the book across the room. In fact, I'm surprised that I haven't already.

So there you have it, my very long opinion on the House of Night novels. But don't let my review keep you from reading the books. Who knows, you just might like reading them. Each to their own.