Review: Misguided Angel by Melissa de la Cruz

Title: Misguided Angel

Series: Blue Bloods
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Publisher: Atom (UK)
Publication Date: 26 Oct 2010

Source: Amazon




Synopsis: From GoodReads
After inheriting the dark Van Alen Legacy, Schuyler fled to Florence with her forbidden love, Jack. Now the two of them must embark on the mission Schuyler was destined to complete: to find and protect the five remaining gates that guard the earth from Lucifer, lord of the Silver Bloods.

Back in New York, Mimi has been elected Regent of a crumbling coven. Struggling with her heartache over the loss of Kingsley and with her overwhelming desire to destroy Jack, she must focus all of her energy on a perilous new threat. Vampires are being abducted and their captors are planning to burn them alive online…for all the world to see. Help arrives in the form of Deming Chen, a Venator from Shanghai, who must untangle the web of deceptions before the killers strike again.
As the young vampires struggle for the survival of the coven, they uncover a deadly secret, a truth first discovered by Schuyler’s mother during the Renaissance but kept buried for centuries. And as the Blue Blood enclave weakens yet further, fate leads Schuyler to a terrible choice that will ultimately map the destiny of her heart

Review:
Misguided Angel starts a few months after the cliffhanging ending of The Van Alen Legacy, we find that events are not turning out the way that we would have expected for most of our main characters. You really do need to read in series order to fully appreciate the intricacies of the plot.

Chapters are divided between continuing the revelations from the past and furthering the action in the present. Sometimes disconcerting as we are unable to put all the pieces together until half way through this book. When it does all click into place, the reader experiences a complete 'light-bulb' moment. The book itself is split into sections varying the focalization and the settings, while developing all threads of the storyline. It completely amazes me that Melissa can keep all the threads so completely under control while remembering all the angles of the storyline.

The writing style is beautifully descriptive along total immersion into the Blue Blood world within my imagination. Some of the descriptions of the food were so sensory I wished I could have the recipes. Via the narrative I was able to fully experience the roller-coaster of emotions the various protagonists felt.

It was amazing how all the central characters were progressed and developed. I cannot go into details for fear of giving away spoilers.  As the plot follows one angle a whole host of different possibilities open up. The story can literally go in any direction.

I completely love this series and cannot wait to see where it is going to go next.