A review by bookalchemist
Misfit by Kelley Skovron

2.0

If you prefer your books with hyperbolic protagonists and as many flashbacks as a Naruto episode, do I have the book for you! Aside from the problems of how they don't actually address what Hell is like or why there's screaming if no one is getting tortured, there's the issue that our protagonist has a father who's only really a character in the flashbacks and puts his daughter in mortal danger purely because he somehow thinks telling her 'here's a necklace, now don't wear it' will somehow work. And then there's the fact that she's got a great destiny, she learns to control some of her powers super surprisingly fast, and Belial, despite being an extremely old and powerful demon at this point, somehow forgets that he won't have the fighting advantage if he tries to kill our protagonist on Earth. He takes her to Hell once, just to taunt her, then never tries that again. Everything in the book felt like the perfect setup for a quirky sitcom, because plot points fell so very neatly. Also, she shaves her head, right? And doesn't get in trouble at school? Every Catholic school I know of would have had some issue with that, special demon child protection from the Vatican or no. I feel like our protagonist probably was into emo music, because she's that edgy.

And one last problem: there were several instances of random way too far moments that felt entirely there for shock value. Such as Jael's friend Britt in general, the way Belial dealt with Jael's mother, and the Mons' secret past. If you're wanting to make a commentary on the problems within the Catholic church, this was not the way to do it.