Yup, all the kids now have affinities for whatever element they represented in Zoey’s uber special circle. 

Why would Nyx touch me with such unusual power just so that I could kick a spoiled bully out of the leadership of a club?

Okay, the Dark Daughters were more than a student council or whatever, but still.

Uuuuh, what?  Hey, Zoey, remember us over here?  Your readers?  We’re really fucking confused right now, because you forgot to clue us in on what ‘more’ the Daughters are.  As far as anyone on this side of sanity knows, they really are just a club.

The fact that important people occasionally are part of that club doesn’t make them more than a club.  They’re still just a club.  They have no power outside of school, and even within the school, we haven’t seen or heard of them doing jack shit except sticking to their own little clique.  They don’t do anything, ever, except be all secret and closed off and also eat people. 

Stevie Rae (bless her little bumpkin heart)

Do you just not know what words mean, and that’s why you keep insulting your supposed best friend?

But I couldn’t make my feet follow them as they started to head back to the dorms.

Ugh, again.  See, clearly something important is about to happen.  But we can’t have Zoey figure out that something is about to happen, or even just give her a normal reason to stay behind.  Instead, let’s give all the decision making power to her fucking feet.  Can the author make it any clearer that Zoey has absolutely no agency in anything at all?

Once she’s alone, Erik shows up.

I guess my feet carried me this way without me telling them to, ’cause next thing I knew here I was and here you are.

No, really, what’s up with the feet in this chapter?

They walk home talking about their respective exes, and Zoey says (basically) that she has doubts about Erik because he used to be with Aphrodite, indicating that his priorities/bullshit-meter are pretty jacked up.  Only she’s a bit less clear about it.

So…basically we’re not leaving any room in this book for Aphrodite to be a good person ever under any circumstances.  She’s just mean, always, to everyone, no exception.  The only time anyone hints that she might be capable of even faking niceness, it’s when she’s faking it to Neferet.  To everyone else, even her own boyfriend, she’s just a one-dimensional cartoon of evil. 

Yeah, because that’s really going to impress me.  Good job, book, you can make cartoons that even a five year-old would call bullshit!

Seriously, she is really pretty and he is a guy.

So you simultaneously claim that it’s OKAY FOR MEN TO VALUE WOMEN BY THEIR LOOKS and also you judge Aphrodite’s looks to be the only good thing about her.

Take a good look, people.  This is internalized misogyny in a microcosm.  She’s basically saying that she had doubts about Erik’s internal quality control, but then again, Aphrodite is hot, so that makes it okay.  IT’S OKAY TO DATE A GIRL BASED ON HOTNESS AND NOTHING ELSE.  IT DOESN’T MAKE YOU SHALLW OR INDICATE ANY SORT OF PERSONALITY PROBLEM.  After all, he’s just a guy, and we can’t expect guys to treat us like actual people.  Let’s just carry on expecting them to be pigs and excusing the way everyone focuses on looks. 

Because fuck feminism, that’s why.

So with that settled, they agree to a date on Saturday and then kiss.

This is a really dull romance.  There’s no obstacle.  They both have exes, but they both hate their exes.  They both like each other.  They’ve both admitted it.  There’s nothing to overcome.  It’s just…*boom* okay, and now a boyfriend.  Also angst, because why should the fact that there’s no problems stop us from complaining about those non-existent problems?

I’d been standing there in front of the dorm making out like a slut.

Oh, and also with a side-order of this nonsense.  Seriously, when has kissing a boy, a boy that you are now dating, been considered slutty behavior?

Also, fuck off book, nothing is worthy of being called a slut, so shut the fuck up already.  Girls are allowed to explore their sexuality without being judged by it.

…good lord, it’s like Ana Steele, the behind-the-scenes.  Maybe Ana was raised by someone like this, someone who pounded into her head that every single little action was ‘slutty’ and that’s why her sexuality was so repressed.

Well, now I’m just depressed and sickened. 

So Zoey points out to Erik that she’s not a slut like Aphrodite is, meaning…uh, nothing?  Really, is she trying to tell him that she won’t have sex?  That she won’t make out?  That she won’t make out in public?  It’s a really vague statement.  And then it’s followed by some really vague stuff about how Erik is totally “touched in the heart, not just in the junk” by her.  Because they’ve had all of I think five minutes of interaction so far, but yeah, that’s totally appropriate talk.

Actually, it sounds more like stalker-talk.  He’s been creepy-watching her all through the book, and now he’s talking about how he knows her so well, even though he shouldn’t know her at all?  It honest to go sounds like one of those scary people who convince themselves that they’re in a relationship with strangers.

Now I’m depressed, sickened, and disturbed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The next day in the middle of class:

that stupid Elliott kid started coughing. Jeesh, the kid was totally and completely annoying.

He’s chronically ill and you know why but you’ve done nothing to help.  Yet you’re willing to think that he’s stupid and annoying just for being sick.  Could you get any worse?

Yup!  See, Elliot is going through his change-rejecting bout of death.  He goes through a truly terrible scene where he coughs up and vomits blood, crying the whole time about how he doesn’t want to die.  Neferet comes in with a couple others, gives him something to ease his death, and the others carry him away.  Then she stands in the middle of the room and gives a speech about how he’s dead, and there’s nothing anyone can do, and also any one of them might be next and that sucks but oh well.

It’s…really really creepy how they treat death in this.  Like there’s just nothing to be done about it at all, oh well, carry on.  Neferet even gives off the tired old “live like you’ll die tomorrow” bullshit.  It’s so defeatist and depressing.  And when you tie it into Zoey’s “hey, I was just born special” shit…it’s like it’s saying that we have no control over our lives.  We die or we get god-like powers, or we don’t, or something else happens, but we have no control over it, so there’s no point in ever trying for anything or doing anything.  Just sit around until something happens, and if nothing happens, well, it was just meant to be. 

And on top of that, how creepy is it that Elliot was being eaten on a constant basis, and now he’s dead, but Zoey has not one fuck to give about that.  Why isn’t she questioning this “nothing to do for it” stuff?  Why isn’t’ she saying “Well, that might be true usually, but what if it’s not now?”  Why is she just passively letting this happen instead of wondering if eating students makes those students die?

Later, everyone is subdued and talking about the death.  Zoey admits that Elliot was being eaten at the Daughers’ rituals. 

“Yeah, it was really gross, and he acted all drugged and weird. He must have been starting to reject the Change even then.”

OR MAYBE HE WAS ILL BECAUSE YOU KEPT STEALING ALL HIS BLOOD AND HIS ILLNESS CAUSED HIS REJECTION-DEATH!  WHY DOES THIS NOT OCCUR TO YOU?  WHY ARE YOU NOT CONERNED ABOUT THIS?  WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?  Are you just so focused on being a horrible, selfish brat that you’d rather assume the worst about someone rather than wonder if they might have been saved?

And I’m supposed to root for you in this book?  I’m supposed to connect with you?  Fuck that.

SR suggests Zoey invite her to a DD ritual, so she’ll have some emotional support, but Zoey is worried SR will find out she likes blood.  Somehow, we’re still stuck on that being a point of high drama, even though nothing in this book indicates that anyone has an issue with it except for Zoey.  Why is this still a thing?  I don’t get it.

Zoey charges up her cell phone and sees that she’s had a bunch of messages and texts from Heath.  And it’s played off as being mildly annoying, instead of behavior that’s actually serious, since it is harassment and might even lead to more serious harassment.  Zoey goes to talk to Neferet about it, not because she’s being harassed, but because Heath might have imprinted on her.

That’s right, if a boy calls you fifteen times in a day, that’s nothing to be worried about!  Unless there’s a supernatural cause, of course.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zoey comes across Aphrodite in an alcove, slumped over with her eyes rolled back in her head.  She’s having a vision.

She’d probably felt it coming on and hidden in the alcove so no one would find her and she could keep her info about the death and destruction she could prevent to her hateful self. Cow. Hag.

Oh, yeah.  Aphrodite is clearly the ‘hateful’ one in this scene.  Sure.

Also, what the fuck?  So these visions involve being completely at the mercy of any passers-by, with no ability to defend against god-knows-what…in a school where absolutely everyone hates her.  Yeah, I would hide, too.  Not to mention she’s currently being forced to view death and destruction that she doesn’t want to see and will now have to repeat that traumatizing vision just because Zoey is on hand to force her.  Why is there not one single note anywhere about how Aphrodite has so little control over anything?  She can’t stop her visions, and that would fuck up anyone.  That would make me think that not telling is at least something I have control over.  But here comes some little brat to once again force the girl to do things. 

Fuck of Zoey.  Fuck off right now and stop calling people hags. 

I just…I just can’t get over how unbelievably hateful and irradiating she is.

When Aphrodite does come to in Neferet’s office a few minutes later, she’s clearly upset and terrified, screaming about blood and having a panic attack.  So now there’s textual evidence, and not my own supposition, that this is an ordeal for her and not something to just be shrugged off.

The points against Zoey just keep stacking up.

Zoey flees and leaves Neferet to deal with that shit.  Later, after school, her other friends meet up with her and again insist on going to the Dark Daughters meeting.  Zoey pulls the “some day I’ll be High Priestess and therefore you must obey me now as well as then” card and tells them to bug off.  Because apparently power=authority– oh, wait, no it doesn’t.  You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want because you have powers, and you can’t order around your peers just because you feel like it.

Brat.

Zoey stops off to be by herself when…*gasp*!  It’s Elliot!

It seemed I’d gone numb, but that was impossible. If I’d been numb there’s no way I could have been so thoroughly petrified.

I can’t make sense of this quote.  She ‘seems’ to be numb but at the same time is exact opposite of numb?  Eh?  Then what makes her ‘seem’ numb in the first place?  What the fuck is going on?

Eh, who cares, let’s get back to Elliot!

Zoey continues to think that he’s a ghost, and retroactively calls Elizabeth a ghost, while failing to see the obvious: duh, he’s a zombie.  Apparently vampyre!zombies get red eyes and fangs, but they have all the other standard corpse traits: the smell, the emaciation, the pale skin.

Then Zoey’s tiny little baby kitten attacks zombie!Elliot, and somehow that actually scares him and he goes running off into the night.

No. This time it wasn’t a scream within me. It was the strength of certainty. I could not tell Neferet, at least not at that moment.

Because….

….

…BECAUSE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!  GIVE ME A REASON, GOD DAMNIT!  YOUR JUDGEMENT HAS BEEN SHITTY THIS ENTIRE BOOK, I’M NOT GOING TO START TAKING YOUR WORD ON THINGS NOW!

Seriously, that’s it.  That’s all we’re given for why she doesn’t tell anyone about Elliot.  Just her say-so and nothing else.

Instead, Zoey just goes to the next Dark Daughters ritual.  Yeah, because that shit is just so important right now.  I mean, high school drama is of cosmic importance in this universe, so let’s focus on that.