Book Review: The Demon Trapper's Daughter

TITLE: The Demon Trapper's Daughter
Book 1 in the Demon Trappers series
AUTHOR: Jana Oliver
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: young adult
GENRE: angels, urban fantasy, drama, romance
PREMISE: Riley is a girl in a world of demons determined to prove that she can trap demons just as well as her father...
MY REVIEW: I'm a little split on this book to be honest. A lot of it I dug. I will also say this author has a lot of potential because if this is her first book then we're in for some great stuff down the road when her writing really improves. But again, it was a first book so there are issues. Characters are not as well fleshed out as they could be, especially the minor ones like Harper who were two-dimensional (and in Harper's case, needed to go die in a fire). Plot also sometimes dragged, there were YA tropes abound, and sometimes Riley angsted way too much. Also some of the world building was rather confusing at times.
But this series has definite promise. It's not uber fantastic yet, but I did find a lot of it intrigueing and Riley was pretty enjoyable (when she wasn't being bratty) and there are some definite mysteries that I'm curious about and look forward to solving in the future books.
Note to younger teens though: this book has lots of swearing, slight adult situations/jokes, and drinking so if you have issues with that sort of thing you may want to avoid this. But for older teens who can handle it you may enjoy this. The next book in the series comes out in Fall of this year.
WHO SHOULD READ: Buffy fans, urban fantasy fans, Holly Black fans
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five demon traps.