May 15, 2011
In the 14th volume of Divine's wildly popular Drama High series, newly initiated voodoo priestess Jayd Jackson begins her senior year.
Jayd is wearing white in honor of her marriage to her spiritual mother Oshune, but, as she observes in her introductory journal entry, her mind is as much on the mundane as on the divine. An incriminating cell phone picture suggests her boyfriend Jeremy is cheating, and Jayd avoids and fights with Jeremy and swaps choice words with "that broad." Her friends Mickey, Rah and Nigel, along with the two young children in their care, move in together ("I know it's strange for some of my friends to be parents going into our senior year of high school," Jayd opines in a refreshingly nonjudgmental aside, "but that's how it is sometimes"), and Jayd is the first to hear when money troubles arise and treacherous exes show up. In the meantime, Jayd's archnemesis Misty is becoming a vampire, a turn of events the author weaves comfortably into the book's voodoo cosmology, and Jayd fights Misty and her kin both in dreams and in the physical world.
Though a few elements seem hastily put together (the same one-liner about the incriminating photo appears twice, for instance), this is a solid installment in Jayd's saga. (discussion guide) (Fiction. 12-16)(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
October 1, 2011
Gr 7–9—-Senior year is just about to begin and Jayd is enraged over a picture of her boyfriend kissing another girl, a frenemy who is exhibiting vampire characteristics, and her friend's mother demanding that she pay $1,100 for a debutante gown that Jayd never wore. Her initiation as a voodoo priestess and the dreams it brings are clarifying the drama. Could the shape-shifting rival voodoo clan be behind it all? She'll need her new powers to keep a cool head and stay safe. This series entry relies heavily on past installments for explanation of important events, and new readers will be lost not knowing Jayd's history. The many story lines are not fully fleshed out, and shape-shifting elements are so few and far between that they aren't intriguing. This effort at mixing urban drama and vampire voodoo lore falls flat.—"Shawna Sherman, Hayward Public Library, CA"
Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.