Review ~ The Devil You Know by Adrian W. Lilly

Ebook received from the author in exchange for an honest review

Description
Seventeen-year-old Julie Collins has moved to an isolated new world that is as haunting as it is beautiful. She and her mother are spending their final days with Julie’s father as he dies of cancer in his boyhood home.

But someone else walks the halls of the old mansion, the ghost of a teenage boy. He appears to Julie and shows her a vision of a ceremony…and a sacrifice.

And suddenly, Julie is trapped in a century-old demonic ritual—and only she can stop it.

My Opinion
When I read the description for The Devil You Know it sounded like my kind of book so obviously I was pleased to accept it to review. The book is set over the month of October with each chapter starting a new day. I thought this was a great idea which made the book easy to follow in relation to time and was quite original. It wasn't until the end that I connected October leading up to Halloween but when I got to that part in the book it all made sense and I liked the correlation.

My favourite character in the book was Paul. I just grew to love him more and more as the novel went on and the relationship between Julie and Paul was developed well. It was believable when they turned to each other for support and the romance that developed subtly was a nice addition.

This book however was a pretty slow read and parts seemed to drag on. I'm not sure if that was because I found the stroyline predictable and had guessed how it ended 30% in so was just waiting to get to that point, but for me I struggled to get through sections and nearly found myself giving up towards the 70% mark. The only reason I didn't was that I had spent so many hours reading that far I needed to finish it to make it worth while. 

As well as this because of the predictable nature, this book didn't really hold my interest very well and the choppy style of writing that jumped from different points of view and dreams made it slightly confusing and less engaging for me. The other thing that really irritated me was the character Marie-Do (Marie-Dominique) I don't know why but the name just really annoyed me to read and every time she came up the name really distracted me, however this is personal preference.

Overall this wasn't a totally unenjoyable book. It was a bit slow and parts were hard to read or predictable but it did have good points like the relationships and everything tying in nicely with the timeline and ending. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be but I guess that's a bonus as I won't be freaking myself out tonight.