This is book two of the Mount Olympus Academy series of young adult fantasy novels. In this book we follow the 17 year old Edith (Edie) Evans as she is becoming more familiar with the supernatural academy. After succeeding in shape-shifting into a dragon in the previous book, Edie is now a well-respected and even feared student at the academy. With the approval of Themis, the counselor, Edie assembles a small group (Greg the bat shape-shifter, Jordan the panther shape-shifter and Hepatitis the witch who is a healer) to search for her missing mother, Lyla. However, the mission goes awry, and the group have to return to the academy after battling a fierce giant scorpion. During the mission, they accidentally come across Nico, a werewolf shape-shifter. Nico was presumed dead after disappearing on a school mission a year ago. Edie saves Nico who then tells her that her friend, the seer Cassandra (Cassie), is being held in a monsters’ prison, as part of the ongoing bloody struggle between the gods and the monsters.

Edie decides to gather the group once again and rescue her friend. Nico joins them and they succeed in releasing Cassie after harsh fighting against the monsters. During the fight, Edie takes pity on a mother manticore and her infant, to the great disapproval of Nico, who hates all monsters. Later the students find out that Nico’s mother, the fierce Maddox Tralano, will be teaching at the academy. She is a wolf shape-shifter as well, and she strongly believes that all monsters should be annihilated. Nico is an extremely obedient son who follows his mother’s commands without questioning them.

While the students must get used to Maddox, a strange plague also infects many shape-shifters in the academy and causes great concern. The plague causes tension within the student body, especially between shape-shifters and vampires, who are usually at odds with each other. During the plague, it appears that Tina the vampire, who is Edie’s roommate, is not a pure-blood vampire, since she is also infected. Edie keeps her secret and helps her recover. It appears that Tina’s conceit and aloof behavior is an attempt to hide a painful past. He real mother was a mix-breed and was killed by their father’s vampire wife. In order to save face, the twins, Tina and Val, try to act as the perfect vampires.

Edie’s love life also becomes quite complicated. Val, the vampire she was falling for, has brought his fiancée, Larisa, to the academy. Larisa turns out to be kind-hearted and gentle, and becomes friends with Edie, unaware of her former connection with Val.

While all of this is going on in the academy, Edie, with the help of Themis, manages to locate her mother as well as her sister Mavis in a small Greek village. However, she discovers that her mother has no memory of her or her former family anymore, and she is living with a new husband now, and even has a baby with him. Her sister Mavis discloses the shocking truth to her.

It turns out that Mavis is a cat shape-shifter. She studied at the academy and decided to side with the monsters. When Nico found out that she was a spy, she had to escape, while gouging his eye, after causing much harm and betraying her friends. As a spy, Mavis used the name Emmie Jenkins at the academy. She tells Edie that amongst the monsters, there is a violent renegade group which wishes to fight all the gods and their supporters. These are the ones who led the attack on the academy during the dance. Mavis also tells Edie that one of the monsters, Leviathan, fell in love with Mavis’ and Edie’s adoptive mother, Lyla, and when he was turned down he chased their father and killed him. This happened during the strange tsunami which occurred in the first book. Hence the monsters did not kill Edie’s adoptive father, Daniel Evans, as a part of the war, but rather it was one monster who did it as his personal revenge. Their mother was consequently so distraught from everything she had suffered, that she asked the monsters to eradicate her memory of her former life.

Mavis still keeps contact with the monsters, but need to remain in hiding. In the end, the sisters overcome their differences and make up, although they support opposite causes.

Later, Maddox leads a raid against the monsters who captured Cassie and, losing control during the figh, she kills the vampire student Larisa, who tries to stop her from killing a baby manticore. Edie then secretly saves the baby.

In the end, Val is heart broken over Larissa’s death. Maddox is turned into a human as punishment and Val and a group of vampires secretly kills her afterwards. Edie is torn between Nico and Val and this horrible secret. The book ends with another cliffhanger. When Edie arrives at Mavis’ to give her the baby manticore, they find out that Nico had traced Edie to Greece and now the sisters must face this ferocious wolf.

In this book, the heroine, Edie, must continue to face the challenges of growing up and becoming a young woman, while the fantastic setting enhances the drama and difficulties she must overcome.

Edie admits that being able to shift into a dragon, makes her feel good and special, even though she detests shedding blood. It makes her feel important and unique, a feeling which is a very common need for adolescents (to people of all ages in fact). Edie is preoccupied with her love life, her attraction to Val and possibly Nico, while she is disappointed that Val has a fiancé. Learning that Larissa is sweet only complicates things, since Edie feels bad for continuing to think of Val when he is already taken. The romantic dilemmas and struggles (as well as the sexual and romantic references) take up much of the book and they form an equal part to the fantastic action. In the end, it is a complicated love story, which just happens to involve young adults with supernatural powers (similarly to the Twilight saga for example).

Furthermore, Edie must also come to terms with the new developments regarding her family, especially her mother. She deeply missed her mother during these difficult months, yet her mother could not stand the pain herself and Edie feels betrayed and alone. Reconciling with her older sister helps to ease her loneliness, and her friends at the academy function as her alternate family. Edie repeatedly stresses how much she loves her friends, who become her source of comfort and strength. We see how gradually friends and lovers replace the initial familial bonds, although as soon as Mavis returns to her life it gives Edie balance and strength. The message that is strongly advocated in this narrative is that you can choose your support network which becomes a family. Since Edie does not know her biological parents, she has strong ties with Mavis, who is not biologically related to her, and with her friends. Hence real family is comprised of the people who care about us and from whom we receive support and compassion.

This story also exhibits several mother-figures and the conflict between these figures intensifies. The mother motif is strongly repeated as Edie searches for her mother, a common theme in YA fiction.. One such mother is Themis, who may appear inflexible at first, but she is truly concerned about Edie and her family and tries to keep her safe (her character fits the trope of the hard teacher who turns out to be kind and caring) She was close with Lyla, Edie’s non-biological mother as well, since she raised Edie’s father as her own (as noted in the first book, Edie was secretly rescued by her adoptive parents and taken from the academy with the help of Themis). Themis could be inflexible due to her mythological reference as the keeper of law and order. The second is Maddox, who is abusive, harsh and even cruel. She pushes her son to become like her and fills him with hatred for the monsters and for anyone who disagrees with her. The third is Lyla, Edie’s (adoptive) mother, who preferred to erase her memories than live with the pain of what happened to her family. In doing so, she abandoned her daughters. The fourth is Cassie’s mother, Merilee, who is deeply concerned about her daughter. She is the warmest and most affectionate of them all. The fifth and sixth are Tina and Val’s two mothers, their father’s wife, the vampire adoptive mother who resented them and murdered their biological mother, and the biological mother, the shape-shifter. Tina bitterly tells Edie that their mother was very beautiful although she had no pedigree; their father treated her like his pet, parading her around. All of these mother-figures have a significant influence on the wellbeing and maturing of their children. We see in the series how the children wish for their mothers’ approval and try to imitate them, even if they treated them badly. Added to this list is of course the manticore mother, who tried to save her baby in the cost of her life, showing that mothers are loving and protective, even among monsters. In fact, the monster-mother was more “human” than Maddox or Tina’s Vampire mother, raising the question once more, who is the real monster.

Regarding the Greek gods, as in the first book, the gods are described as manipulative and cowards; they prefer to use the students as their pawns against the monsters. They are also sex-crazy, especially Zeus, who does not hide his wish to sleep with the students. They are certainly not role models and they do not even follow their own rules. Again, these descriptions make the monsters’ side appear at time to be more benevolent than the gods. The Greek mythological elements give the book the overall structure, the various characters move around in a “verse” which is built upon Greek mythology but is also immersed with other unique creatures from other folklores. 

To conclude, as noted, this book (as the entire series), takes its inspiration from other YA novels such as Twilight and TV shows, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the series, the heroine must go over a kind of “maturation-ritual” (in the words of Elizabeth Hale – Hale, peer-review) and discover her true identity and inner strength. She must learn to overcome her personal loss, especially the double loss of her mother (real and adoptive). The heroine must mature into adulthood with the support of other surrogate mothers who guide her in the process.

The review refers to the Kindle edition.