Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Release Date: December 27, 2011
Source: Purchased
Order: Powells || Amazon
Every other day, Kali D’Angelo is a normal sixteen-year-old girl. She goes to public high school. She attends pep rallies. She’s human.
And then every day in between . . .She’s something else entirely.
Though she still looks like herself, every twenty-four hours predatory instincts take over and Kali becomes a feared demon-hunter with the undeniable urge to hunt, trap, and kill zombies, hellhounds, and other supernatural creatures. Kali has no idea why she is the way she is, but she gives in to instinct anyway. Even though the government considers it environmental terrorism.
When Kali notices a mark on the lower back of a popular girl at school, she knows instantly that the girl is marked for death by one of these creatures. Kali has twenty-four hours to save her and, unfortunately, she’ll have to do it as a human. With the help of a few new friends, Kali takes a risk that her human body might not survive. . .and learns the secrets of her mysterious condition in the process. —Goodreads
In a nutshell: Part-time Buffy, full-time angst.
Main Character: Kali is generally cool and likable, though I couldn’t shake the constant feeling of wanting her to be Buffy. Setting that bias aside, I like Kali a lot. Unlike Buffy, she only has her demon-killing strength half of the time and has nobody around to explain how or why this happened (it’s also more of an innate predatory thing than the Slayer gig). We get a lot more angst and feeling than I’d prefer, but it makes a lot of sense, given the nature of Kali’s situation and the basic fact of being 16. The woe-is-me stuff is largely relegated to the beginning, so if you can survive the first few chapters, Kali improves tremendously. She spends much of the book being snarky, kicking ass, and being self-sacrificing for things other than a boy, so I’m a fan.
Love Interest?: This is probably the strangest aspect of the book, but points to Jennifer Lynn Barnes for handling it subtly enough to make it palatable. Kali is generally busy with trying to save Bethany and brood over what exactly she is, so she dedicates almost none of her internal monologue to fretting over the boys in her life. There is a certain boy who seems poised to be a love interest and, thankfully, is not. Instead, we get something moderately creepy that I still haven’t made up my mind about. The “romance” has its strengths, but there are some power dynamics involved that leave me unsure of my opinion.
Supporting Character Racism?: Kali spends a loooot of time talking about how she herself is Indian and Italian. She looks half-Indian, thanks to her mother, but has an Italian last name. She is constantly being side-eyed by people over this. She’s pretty funny about it, and that aspect is handled quite nicely. That said, all of her friends are white, making this is a moot point.
Negligent Parent?: Bunches! We meet her single-parent father right away. He’s largely MIA, possibly a little sinister, and receives the brunt of Kali’s angst, as one would expect. He’s a single parent because her mom ran out on them, which is kind of the gold standard for negligent parenting. Supporting character Bethany also has a fine set of negligent parents. There is also at least one parent who takes this to the next level by crossing from negligence to genuine evil. Good times are had by all. I don’t know that I could award a single Sandy Cohen Eyebrow to a parent in this book.
Ho Suspensions?: Counter-ho-suspension (HBIC-honor-roll?) for Skylar who is an A+ sidekick to Kali. Skylar is an outcast who owns her undeserved title of school slut with a bit of bravado and quirky charm. I just wanted to hug her all the time always.
A+: Skylar and Bethany. Kali, for all her martyrdom, was occasionally a shit friend in the book, but these two were fantastic. Also A+ for Skylar’s weird, wholly unbelievable, and contrivancey family for being cute when asked to appear. I liked the fact that this is a YA book that highlighted a range of kinds of relationships.
Fail: The aforementioned contrivancey nature of Skylar’s family. She has approximately four million brothers and whenever an obscure thing is needed, Skylar seems to have a brother who does just that thing. Also, possible fail points for the creep factor of the romance that I still haven’t settled my feelings on. Or I can’t actually remember my feelings. One of the two.
The end: A bit quick. There is a lot of good build-up and then it is over and it feels like there should be more. (TWSS). It also feels a little too simple. The epilogue could easily be fleshed out into its own separate novel.
And so: I enjoyed this book a lot while I was reading and finished it quickly. I cared about most of the characters, and Jennifer Lynn Barnes has a very engaging writing style. There were some things that felt incomplete about the book, and I read it a few months ago and found this a little difficult to write because it just didn’t stick with me, but on the whole it was a decent read.
Final Grade: B
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
