This book is absolutely amazing. I bought this book at Barnes & Noble for a really good price, and read it in about 2-3 hours. It's faced paced, with no slow parts. If you like the idea of violence and demons, this book will deliver that nonstop. The Merciless follows the story of Sofia, a girl who moves around a lot because of her mothers job. She moves to a small town where she encounters a group of very religious girls. These girls believe that a girl named Brooklyn is possessed by a demon. There's not too much I can say without spoiling the whole book, but it is amazing, to say the very least! Okay, so I would be totally lying if I said I didn't pick up this book for its epic pink cover. Graphic Design being one of my many loves I appreciate a good cover design and this one is amazing. Clean cut, bright pink, with a large gold pentagram... it's gotta be an interesting story inside and it is....somewhat. As with the cover I was also drawn to story after reading the description. Mean Girls meets The Craft, so it has to be awesome and it almost was. !!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!First, I really did like this book, it's more 3 and half stars in some parts but it didn't meet my full expectations. Basically it was a fun quick read and I finished the last 200 pages in an hour.When we first meet our Heroine?Anti-hero?Protagonist?, I'm not sure what she really is, Sofia, she's in the lunch line at her brand new high school. She seems interesting enough, an army brat of sorts she hasn't had a steady place to live in a long while and instantly catches the attention of cool guy Charlie and Brooklyn, an edgy girl who doesn't seem to play by the rules. Good start, I'm liking where this could be headed especially when obvious popular, God loving girl Riley enters the picture along with her lackeys Alexis and Grace. It's all Plastics and Bible-thumping from this point, except for that skinned cat under the bleachers, but never mind that. The story goes it's natural course, Riley befriends Sofia bringing her into her throng of picture perfect popular groupies, and right away pointing out the evil that is Brooklyn. Sofia desperately wanting friends clings to this and against her better judgment decides to spy on Brooklyn for Riley. All the while this is going on Sofia is struggling with some internal guilt over something that happened at her last school. Hoping not to repeat that, whatever that is, she does as Riley asks. This is where the deviation from Mean Girls comes. Instead of taking down the Queen Bee the Plastics are going after that Devil Brooklyn!When Sofia tells Riley that she saw Brooklyn and Q.B.'s boyfriend Josh getting hot and heavy at a party the proverbial final straw is broken and Brooklyn must be saved... huh?Here is where the normal teen dramedy would be about seeking revenge but that's the opposite. Instead Riley wants to cleanse Brooklyn of the demon living inside her and she brings Sofia and her two lackeys along for the ride. Now if I was Sofia and some girl I just met told me another girl I just met was possessed by a demon I'd back away as quick as possible. I'm Christian and I can laugh at my own religion and religious cliches which would be Riley and her friends. This is why I was able to enjoy the book, it's really not to be taken too seriously and even if it was meant to scare people it seems like more of a stiff parody of what the author wanted it to be. Anyway... we get to the main part of the book only about 70 pages in. Riley sneaks Sofia and the others away to an abandoned house shown earlier in the book. She goes along for the girl time, leaving no note for her army mom which instantly seems like a bad idea. And a bad idea it is! As soon as they're in the house the true plans for the night are unveiled, these wannabe debutaunts are going to do an exorcism and Sofia is part of it. She tries to escape but that doesn't work, the giant bolted latch at the top of the door will make sure of that. This is where chaos insues, Riley has obviously taken time to think this through having nailed down every door and window in the house, locking all suspects and victims inside. Sofia is trapped with this lunatic but decides to go along. It's just a bunch of hocus pocus... right? Right? Brooklyn is gagged and blindfolded in the basement. Let me take a break from this real quick and say I'd like to know how they even got Brooklyn? Why was this not mentioned? Why did Sofia not ask how they pulled it off? Whatever, back to the story. Shit starts to go down and soon the playful game of 'let's perform an exorcism' is replaced by terror and some maiming. A few times I had to read past a passage (I don't like nails). Sofia knows things are getting out of hand and a few times tries to steer the direction of Riley's plot to it's end but with no success. By now Riley's torture is becoming more and more deadly, at one point Brooklyn escapes but that quickly ends with her getting the upper hand again. All the while Sofia is trying to find a way out, trying to stop the madness and fighting her own inner demon, which we still don't know. She and Brooklyn are on the same side by now always making head jesters and wide eyes at each other in attempt to communicate. But this isn't the only problem as Brooklyn starts to make the girls turn on each other by speaking their real sins. Riley is becoming more crazy by the second and Sofia is just trying to survive and who the heck knows what's going on with Thing 1 and Thing 2 (mainly Thing 2, that's Alexis). The only thing we do know is Brooklyn should definitely be dead by now with everything they've done to her but she's not. This is where the pages at the end started to really thin and all I could think was "Where the hell is this going to end?" Really I figured something along the lines of a massive battle taking place where Sofia finally takes a stand with Brooklyn, somehow police show up, Riley ends up dead, house up in flames as the other two chicklettes are lead away in handcuffs while the last two girls look on after surviving the house of horrors. Not at all what happens. I won't spoil that. What I will say is the ending is left very open, not for a sequel, but for more of a wtf moment to swirl around in your head. My ending is boring and goody-goody but at least it kinda makes sense.What I got from this book was a fun little horror story you might find as a B lifetime movie during Halloween. What I wish I had gotten was more back story, more character development, more answers to justify the ending. What this book could have used was another 200 pages to create a real world with it's own universe of rules and paranormal entities. The author claims to be a Buffy fan so why didn't she bring any of that flare to the table? This book feels more like a first draft before the whole world around the characters is completely crafted to tie everything together. But I guess I expect too much sometimes. This is the author's debut novel so hopefully in the future she'll get better and create the story I wish I had gotten here.
