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Misguided Angel (Blue Bloods #5) by Melissa de la Cruz.

Title: Misguided Angel
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Genre: YA, Paranormal, Romance
Publisher: Atom
Publication Date: 26 Oct 2010
Goodreads Summary: After inheriting the dark Van Alen Legacy, Schuyler fled to Florence with her forbidden love, Jack. Now the two of them must embark on the mission Schuyler was destined to complete: to find and protect the five remaining gates that guard the earth from Lucifer, lord of the Silver Bloods.

Back in New York, Mimi has been elected Regent of a crumbling coven. Struggling with her heartache over the loss of Kingsley and with her overwhelming desire to destroy Jack, she must focus all of her energy on a perilous new threat. Vampires are being abducted and their captors are planning to burn them alive online...for all the world to see. Help arrives in the form of Deming Chen, a Venator from Shanghai, who must untangle the web of deceptions before the killers strike again.

As the young vampires struggle for the survival of the coven, they uncover a deadly secret, a truth first discovered by Schuyler’s mother during the Renaissance but kept buried for centuries. And as the Blue Blood enclave weakens yet further, fate leads Schuyler to a terrible choice that will ultimately map the destiny of her heart.

{ Review }

WARNING: This review may contain spoilers for those of you who have not read the previous books. Click for my reviews of them: Masquerade, Revelations, The Van Alen Legacy and The Keys to the Repository.

Again, the blurb on the back of this book was disappointingly inaccurate. The Goodreads one, although much better, is a bit misleading in my opinion. Firstly, what is so dark about the Van Alen Legacy? The use of word 'dark' implies that it is some sort of evil task which is not the vibe I got from reading the book. Of course, what Schuyler has to do is no walk in the park, but it is a slightly hyperbolic opening phrase. (I think the English student inside of me has woken up). Secondly, the use of the word 'embark' is very important because that is literally what Jack and Schuyler do. They only get to one gate in this novel and are nowhere near to completing their task by the end of the novel. Thirdly, having finished the book within the last five minutes, I can't recall what this supposedly deadly secret is and I also can't remember Schuyler having to make a terrible choice. Did I miss a few chapters or something?

So here's what actually happened in Misguided Angels: The story carries on immediately from the end of 'The Van Alen Legacy'. Jack and Schuyler have sought shelter in the European Conclave, but they end up being more like prisoners during their stay, under constant watch and observation. They plot to escape and succeeding this, finally get on their way to carrying out the mission Schuyler's grandfather set out for her. Meanwhile, Mimi has been made Regent of the Conclave in her father's a sense. She receives a few anonymous emails containing videos of Blue Bloods feeding on their human familiars that have been made viral and she has to hunt down the people responsible to quash the threat to the Blue Blood's secret. The same people are threatening to burn vampire teenagers so the stakes are even higher for seventeen year old Mimi Force. After Mimi's failed attempt to unveil the culprit behind these viral videos, she gets help from Deming Chen, a Chinese Venetor, who has never failed a mission. Deming tries to infiltrate the Blue Blood teen society to find out who's behind this mess but there are some twists and turns along the way.

This book is made up of four parts. The first part is about Schuyler and Jack, the second about Mimi, the third about Deming and the fourth is a short conclusion to the previous three sections. At random intervals there are also flashbacks from the past. This format of this book is quite different from the previous four. Whilst those books had really short chapters with the narrator frequently switching between different character's perspectives, Misguided Angels is made up of three very long narratives. To be honest, I found the first part really quite boring. The Jack and Schuyler line is interesting for a few pages, but I quickly became bored of it as nothing seemed to be happening. The little flashbacks that happened at random intervals were also really annoying because I didn't understand who the characters were or what they were doing and as each flashback was only two pages long, I failed to understand their significance. The second part, which follows Mimi, is much more interesting. As I said in my review of The Van Alen Legacy, Mimi has started to change and is quite a different person. She now has a lot of responsibility and as Regent of the coven, it is her duty to guide the Blue Bloods through these unstable times. This part and the section following it were much more like detective stories as they try to locate the source of the threat and destroy it. There's lots of mystery and intrigue here as it's a completely new story line with some new characters. We also see a relationship (not romantic) develop between Mimi and Oliver which is curious and quite sweet (as a concept). The third section, from the perspective of Deming, was definitely my favourite. It was weird to see the story written from the point of view of a character we had only just met and had no significant role in the previous books but because I really liked her character, this didn't bother me.
I've been reading the Blue Blood books, one after the other, in quick succession so it was really refreshing to see things from a completely new characters perspective. Deming's section was the most compelling and had the most interesting story line. Deming is called in after Mimi's failure to uncover the threat and she tries to get to know the popular kids at Duchesne, characters who have either never been introduced before or who have only been mentioned in passing before. This part was literally like a whole new story because of the new plot strands and new characters but it was still firmly grounded in the NY conclave because of Mimi's involvement in this section. I particularly liked that this section made me laugh a few times. There are few jokes thrown in, I hope they were intentional otherwise that's a bit awkward. There's also one rather sexy scene, the sexiest we've seen yet, but it doesn't last long. There's also some romance in this section, and it's great right up until the end when too much happens too quickly, which was disappointing. The novel ends with three short passages detailing the results of the events that go on in the three sections I just described. This section let the novel down because it was far too rushed. After reading three long narratives, it was slightly jarring to be thrown from chapter to chapter again. So many important things happen in these last few pages but it was all a bit too much for my liking.

There is zero mention of Bliss in this novel. Literally zero. It's not like I missed her, but i would've thought that there would be some indication as to what she's up to. There also isn't that much mention of the silver bloods. In fact, it seems like there is another threat, in conjunction with the silver bloods, but still separate. At book five out of seven, it is a bit late to change things up and add so many new things, but at least it kept the plot moving.

This book is completely different to the previous novels in this series. You could say there are three separate stories going on in this book and the ties linking them together are very weak. The Mimi/Deming stories are really interesting, but I found the first half between Jack and Schuyler to be a bit drawn out and boring. This is definitely one of the better novels in this series, though a lot of the events that happened weren't particularly connected to the events in the other books.