Liars, Inc. | Book Review

Title: Liars, Inc.

Author: Paula Stokes

Genre: Mystery, YA

Summary: A student named Max starts a club called Liars, Inc. where he and his friends forge signatures, call in for "sick" kids, and other petty high school stuff. But then, Max is framed for the disappearance for this best friend, Preston and things go from bad to slightly less bad to really bad to ???

Rating: 3/10 stars

Review: 

I'm going to start this review with the things I did not like. First, the character Parvati. While part of me can appreciate a half-Indian love interest/female lead (not something you see in YA fiction a lot), most of me was upset with Parvati's characterization. It wasn't enough to make her a free spirit, which is something that I don't think I would have a problem with. Stokes took it way too far.

My issue comes with her being a lying, scheming, drug abusing manipulator. A South Asian girl being shown as untrustworthy and only starting to gain a conscience when she finds the right Basic White Boy? Come on, now. It's a main point of the story that the characters are all untrustworthy, but I feel that Stokes overdid it with Parvati's character. Max lies to the FBI? Shitty decision but when you're being set up for murder and interrogated, with a criminal record, I can understand why he'd do those things and for his character, it makes sense for him to impulsively do things. If I were in his position, I'd probably make the same dumb choices. With Preston, not to spoil anything, but I get why he did the things he did. It's believable and in line with his characterization. 

But with Parvati, I felt that too much was piled onto her to make her seem too much like a mysterious bad girl, when her smarts and rebellious streak that got her kicked out of her last school would have been more than enough to justify the narrative painting her as untrustworthy and for Max doubting her. Unfortunately, Stokes decided to dump way too much onto Parvati and it turned out messy and insensitive.

There are a pair of twin Korean babies in the story, and they're nowhere near needed for the plot. One's named something or another but the other is named Jo Lee, as in that's her "first name" and her surname is the name of the white people who adopted her. I'm obviously not an expert on Korean culture, but I'm at least eighty percent sure that the name Jo Lee makes no sense as a given name. Lee is a surname. And even if the kid's surname was Lee and her first name was just Jo, her twin would have the same surname, which she does not in the book. Again, I'm not Korean, or even Korean-American, so I could be wrong about this, but if I'm not, that seems a bit like the typical "pick vague names that possibly fit a culture and put them in the book because Western readers won't know the difference" bs that many authors like to pull.

Then there's a part in which a character has green eyes and pale skin and therefore looks ~less Latino~ and :) when :) will :) white :) people :) realize :) that :) they're :) not :) the :) only :) ones :) with :) pale :) eyes :) and skin :) and :) having :) those :) features :) does :) not :) make :) PoC :) any :) less :) of :) members :) of :) their :) own :) race :) :) :)

There's also a part in which Parvati is referred to as looking "otherworldly, like a ghost or a hot alien chick" because yeah, people who aren't 100% white Americans must be ALIENS. You can have a love interest who is a woman of color without using the teenage male narrator to fetishize her and make lowkey racist remarks about her. Hiding behind the character won't excuse your casual racism.

But racist undertones aside, Liars, Inc. is a pretty predictable mystery. There was no point where I slapped my hand over my mouth or gasped aloud. For a book that is advertised to be like Gone Girl and How To Get Away With Murder, clearly you can see why I was disappointed with the mystery plot. I guessed many things early on. As soon as one clue was revealed, I figured out its significance. I kept reading the book because I wanted to be blindsided by something. I wanted Max to actually turn out to be guilty, or for any of my predictions to be completely wrong. A photo of a kid who looks like Preston could turn out to be a photoshopped red herring. All these videos and photographs that were found of Parvati having sex? Perhaps they led to someone getting arrested for child pornography (for real, you can't tell me that F.B.I. agents would just let that slide. I've been binge watching Quantico. Alex Parrish would never let something like that go.) I feel that SOMETHING should have come from nowhere and thrown the reader for a loop, but it never happened.

The book might have benefited from involving Liars, Inc. more. After the first act of the book, the idea is just dropped and only mentioned in passing. I get that there is a mystery happening but I feel that if half the premise is this club, and the book is NAMED after it, there should have been a bigger purpose for it. Like Max said, he would have covered for Preston even if Liars, Inc. didn't exist, so why was it in the book in the first place if the narrative wasn't going to use it for more than a few chapters?

Overall, Liars, Inc. isn't the worst book I've ever read, and it's not the worst YA mystery out there. But with its offensive content and paint-by-numbers plot, it's not anything special. I flew threw it thanks to the short chapters, and while there are worse books to spend time on, I still don't think Liars, Inc. is a must read for YA mystery lovers.

Goodreads

Amazon

Too Late by Colleen Hoover | Book Review

Title: Too Late
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Summary: This girl is in an abusive relationship but then starts a secret relationship with the undercover cop who is trying to bust her drug trafficking boyfriend because that's obviously a smart idea.
Rating: 3/10 unnecessary epilogues
Review:

I love Colleen Hoover's books, and she's a great writer. But I feel like this book was not very good.

The premise is interesting and it starts off strong, but everything quickly goes downhill. The characters feel underdeveloped and cliche. I don't like how this story is supposed to be about how Generic Female Lead overcomes this abusive relationship, but in the end it's her Generic Male Hero who ends up saving her from the relationship.

The ending, without spoiling anything, is a mess. Generic Female Lead starts to act completely out of character in a "revenge" scene that is as uncomfortable as it is disgusting. When the reader is feeling grossed out by the main couple of a romance novel, that's probably not the best sign of a good book.

The only interesting character, unfortunately, is Asa, the abusive boyfriend. The 3 points I've given the book come from him. While he's nuts and evil and a terrible person, at least he's got some sort of personality! I would much rather have read a book all about him than the snoozefest that was Generic White People Falling In Love. The backstory of him and his father, as well as the crime ring he runs would have made for a much more entertaining story, in my opinion. In the end, I even found myself hoping there'd be a twist ending, with him winning, just so something about the book could be original. But things end how you'd expect a story like this to end, and it's super boring.

While this is no way turns me off to Colleen's other books, and I'm still going to read anything she and her talent touch, I don't recommend reading Too Late. But if you'd like to read the book anyway, it is available for free on Wattpad.com

Shadowhunters "Moo Shu To Go" Review: Who's Up For a Game of Werewolf?

When you meet your girlfriend's mom and she's kind of an asshole

Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, Shadowhunters has now become a serious show. It now is just intense drama, heartbreaking conversations, and dead main characters at every turn. The campiness of the show was fun while it lasted. It is time for us to put our angst hats on. What's that? There's a Chinese restaurant with 85 cent cocktails and a doggy door for werewolf police officers to enter through? Oh, thank God! I didn't know how I was going to cope with Shadowhunters taking itself too seriously. Guys, "Moo Shu To Go" was a fun episode (wow, what a surprise). We got some character dynamics that we haven't seen much of yet (in the show or the books), some progression in the storylines, and a few mysteries introduced. In true Shadowhunters form, this was a jam-packed hour filled with lots of goodies and weirdness.

The good:

• Up until now, Alec has been off to the side, making grumpy remarks and being a pain in the ass, but in this episode, we finally start to see why he acts the way he does. From his "no homo but very homo" heart-to-heart with a clueless af Jace, to his interactions with his mother, to his job as babysitter of Clary, this was an Alec-centric episode. Alec is not my favorite character from the novels, but a lot of readers love him. Shadowhunters, again, has made me love something that I didn't in the books. Alec's motivations are shown as "first he wants to please his mother, then he wants to protect everyone, then he doesn't like Clary." This is a smart thing for the show to do because it helps the audience understand him better as a character, doesn't put his jealousy of Clary above everything else, and makes him likable enough that the audience doesn't hate him. We see that he's a shadowhunter first and his emotions come second to whatever he does. He may dislike Clary and the trouble she's accidentally causing but he still saves her ass when she needs it. This version of Alec Lightwood is still consistent enough with his book counterpart to keep readers happy but is different enough that those who don't like the book version of him can actually enjoy the way this Alec is written and how well Matthew Daddario is portraying him.

"I can't believe I got stuck babysitting your ass"

• Jace is put on the back burner for Alec to get the spotlight for a little while, and though I love Jace with all my heart, I think it's nice that the show knows that too much of a good thing can be bad. Jace (and the Clace romance) are benched for the majority of the episode so it's nice to know that we can expect breaks from them every now and then. I hate having to compare a YA property to Twilight but I'm gonna break my morals and do it anyway. A problem many people have with the Twilight Saga is that the Bella/Edward romance is 99% of the story, and the interesting side characters and subplots get overlooked in favor of the romance. The Mortal Instruments novels are about 30% Clace and 70% everything and everyone else and it's still too much Clace (especially given that their relationship in the novels was... lacking). But Shadowhunters, while still giving us 2-3 Clace moments per episode, remembers to give us other relationships, other friendships, and, y'know, the entire quest to find the Cup and stop Valentine. It's nice that we can have a teen supernatural show, even one with a bunch of love triangles, that still remembers that romance is not the point of the story and other characters need to breathe.

• I wasn't sure how the show was going to do the werewolves. I've never been a fan of putting makeup on actors and having them be hairy humans rather than actual wolves, but I hadn't heard anything about real live wolves being used on set of the show, so I had accepted my fate: that I would be seeing poorly made up werewolves on my screen for hopefully several seasons of this show. I'm not sure why it never crossed my mind that the show could have CGI wolves, much like the film did, but when I first saw a sneak peek of the wolves a few days before the episode aired, I was convinced the wolves were real and that they just hadn't let fans know the wolves had been on set. When I realized they were CGI, I was impressed. They looked fantastic! These wolves looked so good that I'll forgive the complete nonsense of werewolves being entirely clothed after shifting back to human.

Guys, you're Lightwoods, not Fightwoods

• Probably my favorite part of the episode was Clary putting the rune on the door and it catching fire! Don't you just hate when that happens? I thought that Clary had attempted putting an opening rune on the door and that the rune was too strong and for some reason it caught fire. Clary's face made her look as though she was in a trance or something, which I interpreted as maybe some sort of assistance from up above helping her create a strong rune to escape danger. I thought that a major revelation about Clary from City of Ashes was going to make its way onto the first season of Shadowhunters. Unfortunately, this was actually just a case of Clary mixing up her runes and creating an explosion rune on accident. Oops. I thought this was actually funny because as a Shadowhunter, more so for a newbie for Clary, it'd make sense to get your runes mixed up.

• I like these subtle hints that the show is dropping about what exactly the Circle ideology is, and how some Shadowhunters think of the Downworlders. Maryse's comments about them needing to stay separate and Meliorn pointing out that Shadowhunters don't protect Downworlders like they protect everyone else are good at hinting at what the Circle really is but not telling the viewers what's really happening. I'm loving that the writers are showing the viewers that this Shadowhunters vs Downworlders conflict is a metaphor for race relations and the show is doing it so well without throwing it at the audience's face or making it seem out of place. I can't wait to see how far they're going to go to in showing the audience how awful Shadowhunters can be.

• Simon is showing signs of being a vampire and he thinks he is catching a cold.

The bad:

• I don't like that the show will wait multiple episodes to explain the smallest of things. If Clary saw Dot in episode two and Jocelyn in the pilot, why wouldn't she tell the Lightwoods that the necklace lets her see them? They could have told her a long time ago that the necklace was part Portal. It doesn't change the plot that these answers are coming late but it's irritating. After spending several books not getting answers for plot holes or non-explained happenings in the novels, I'd thought the show would be different. And while I don't have to wait as long for answers, I'm still having to wait. At least we found out what the deal is with Alec's arrows, though.

Shouldn't we call the cops? The real ones?

The Leftovers:

• I'm not sure if it's intentional but every time Alec and Jace parabatai track, it just looks extremely gay. They literally gaze into each other's eyes and start leaning in like they're going to kiss. It's equally funny and sad because Alec will likely never get to kiss Jace.

• Clary thinks Jace is straight. After Jace told Simon his comments about demons in New York is " the first correct thing [he's] said all day" just minutes after Simon said he wasn't Jace's type. I'm not saying Jace is bisexual but Jace is bisexual.

• Seriously what the fuck is Valentine doing? I do like the detail about him speaking Russian to the newborn Forsaken so we know that even if he is just killing mundane New Yorkers, he's at least smart enough not to do all his crimes in the same spot. But really though what is going on? He's creating an army to fight the Clave with, that much we know, but he's collecting different types of blood and creating Forsaken? Are the Forsaken going to be his army? Is he putting Seelie blood and warlock blood in them? Why was he taking blood of people who have the Sight? Is he giving that blood plus the Downworlder blood to the new Forsaken? Will we ever reinstate Pluto as a planet? These are important questions and I demand answers ASAP Rocky.

In the end, "Moo Shu To Go" was wonderful, allowed the show to stretch its wings a bit, gave us a lot of new stuff to analyze and theorize about, and had A+ CGI werewolves walking through a doggy door of a Chinese restaurant. Shadowhunters may not be everyone's 85 cent cocktail, but it's one hell of a fun show. Television is meant to be entertainment and in an age where almost anything vaguely supernatural or science fiction must be full of darkness and gloom, it's refreshing to see a series that knows when to be Batman and when to be Guardians of the Galaxy. "Moo Shu To Go" gets a 9/10 from me.

Shadowhunters "Raising Hell" Review: The Demon Deceived Me!

Harry Shum Jr. as Magnus Bane in Freeform's Shadowhunters

See? Filler episodes can be fun! Filler episodes, for those of you who don't know, are normally put into shows that have over 20 episodes per season, where they have the time to slow down, explore characters, and set up new plot lines. These episodes are notoriously boring, and aren't common in shows that have limited episodes. The first season of Shadowhunters only has thirteen episodes to get through roughly the first book of The Mortal Instruments series so it doesn't make much sense to have filler episodes when every minute is crucial to the complicated world of Shadowhunters. So when a show like this gets a filler episode, it can make viewers wary. But of course, Shadowhunters continues to show viewers why it's one of the best shows on television: even when nothing happens, it's still gripping. Let's jump into this review! *minor spoilers for The Mortal Instruments books will follow*

The good:

• "Raising Hell" gave us our first real look at Magnus Bane - the High Warlock of Brooklyn. He'd had a few minutes of screen time up until now but this is when he truly arrived as massive improvement on his book and film counterparts (like pretty much every aspect of this show). He was kind of a dick, which he has every right to dislike Shadowhunters (if you know about his relation to the ideology of the Circle... it's really hard not to majorly spoil this). Magnus is a warlock who has spent hundreds of years putting up with a bunch of bratty Shadowhunters so it's understandable why he'd be so antagonistic towards them. But we also get to see that he has a soft side and is a protector of other warlocks, especially those younger than he is. He's funny, obviously very powerful, and surprisingly emotional, which brings him a step up from the sparkly caricature he often came off as in the novels. Harry Shum Jr is perfect in the role, giving subtle facial expressions, showing the swagger of an ancient warlock, and being over the top without being laughable. This version of Magnus is the fun guy that long time fans of The Mortal Instruments know and love, but there's an extra aura of intrigue surrounding him that is going to keep viewers that haven't read the books interested in his character.

• I've said it before and I'll say it again: the slow burn revealing about Alec is so well done. TV shows that have LGBT+ characters like to jump out of the gate with telling the audience the character is queer as soon as the character appears because they're pretty much trying to say "hey look at our representation, keep watching because we're progressive!" And while, of course, representation is important and shows are allowed to let the audience know early on that a character is queer, the way Shadowhunters is doing Alec's characterization is preferable to me because they're letting the audience like (or dislike) him as a person before bringing up the fact that he's gay. It's just important that in an age when fiction is trying to be inclusive of the LGBT+ community, writers understand that a character being queer is not more important than them being a person.

Emeraude Toubia and those other people as Isabelle
Lightwood and those other characters in
Freeform's "Shadowhunters"

• Clary and Isabelle continue to be cute and supportive of each other while making not-so-subtle comments about the other's naughty bits and, honestly, this show could just be a series of Clary and Isabelle flirting and I would be totally cool with that.

• I know that I talk a lot of shit about The Mortal Instruments books but one thing that is really nice about them is the humor. It's pretty hit or miss but when it does hit, it's very funny. So imagine my surprise when direct quotes from the novels started making their way onto my screen. It made me so gleeful, and the only things I typically get gleeful about are cupcakes and Chris Hemsworth.

• Speaking of novel references, there were a few easter eggs in this episode, and one in particular that likely gave a few fans heart palpations. First, we have the cautious warlock Elias, who meets a different fate in the book series. He isn't a major character but it was nice that they are using the book characters in new ways such as they've done with Elias and Maureen (she was a thirteen year old who was stalking Simon in the books). Second, that kid Kirk that Simon said Jace is like? In the novels, Kirk is the lead singer of Simon's band before he is replaced by an actual piece of shit named Jungle Kool-aid, which I'm sure is why the writers of the show gave Simon the "Kool-aid" line while he argues with Clary. Third, and this is the big one, Magnus name dropped Tessa, as in Tessa Gray, as in the protagonist of the prequel to The Mortal Instruments, as in the protagonist of The Many Adventures of Tessa Gray and Her Sweetheart Jem Carstairs The Infernal Devices. Word has been going around that if Shadowhunters proves to be a successful enough show, Freeform will start production on a spin off based on The Infernal Devices, which is pretty much Shadowhunters mixed with steampunk and automatons. So yeah, name dropping Tessa so casually may be a hint of a future adaptation of her story and that's something the world needs to be blessed with.

Emeraude Toubia as Isabelle Lightwood in Freeform's Shadowhunters

The bad:

• The show seems to be flipping between good and bad effects which makes it even more noticeable. If it's 100 degrees outside and someone drops a bucket of ice on you, you're going to notice. That's how I feel about the effects here. Magnus's magic looks amazing, the Portals look good, and I love it when demons and vampires die and they explode into the golden orange lava. It just looks aweseome. But the demons... could be better. The entire memory demon scene was unintentionally hilarious because the demon looked like a tornado and Jace's flying was strange. It just wasn't as good as previous effects on the show have been. However, this is a television series on Freeform, and it's just on the first season and doesn't have a huge budget, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt. It's still funny though.

• Simon's subplot was disruptive. It only happened two or three times but it was still so removed from the main action that it just didn't gel right. We had most of the episode being about Clary, Magnus, and Alec and how their development all goes together, but we'd take breaks to check in on Simon and his vampire drama. They have to get Simon's symptoms into the plot somehow, but I feel like that could have been saved for the next episode. 

• Clary is wearing a very tight, short dress, she doesn't have a bag to put anything in, so she doesn't have anywhere she could be hiding the handle of an unlit Seraph Blade yet she miraculously has it when they get to Magnus's? Alec's bow and arrows disappear after he kills Valentine's assassin? And then they reappear later? Weapons pop up when needed and it's confusing. Isabelle's whip is always on her as a bracelet and Jace has pockets he can hide weapons in but Clary and Alec don't have these luxuries so where are these weapons coming from? This is a minor thing and doesn't really affect the story but it's still irritating because while I could see perhaps Clary strapping her blade to her thigh, or Jace carrying it in his pocket for her, Alec can't strap a big ass bow and a bunch of arrows to his thighs. And they're certainly not going to fit in Jace's pockets. 

• Valentine actually sent just one assassin to find Magnus the first time. He sent ONE person after the High Warlock of Brooklyn. He did send more later on but still. He originally sent one person to kill one of, if not the most powerful warlock in the world.

Overall summary:

"Raising Hell" was a filler episode and nothing much changed in the plot except that Clary's memories are forever gone and Alec is almost completely out of the closet. But despite the lack of the plot moving a lot forward, and a few things not making much sense, there was still a lot of fun to be had in this episode. "Raising Hell" gets an 8/10 intricately drawn pentagrams stars from me.

Shadowhunters airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Freeform (formerly ABC Family)

Shadowhunters: "Dead Man's Party" Review

Kat McNamara and Dominic Sherwood as Clary Fray and Jace Wayland in Freeform's Shadowhunters

It’s been two weeks since we’ve gotten brand new Shadowhunters footage. And holy cow, was it worth the wait. “Dead Man’s Party” proved that “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” didn’t just happen to be a hundred times better than the pilot. Shadowhunters has improved greatly over the course of just THREE episodes, and it’s not even a third of the way through its first season. Most fantasy/supernatural shows take at least half a season to start getting intense and emotionally heavy but Shadowhunters just skipped out on all the “gradually getting better” nonsense and went from 0 to 100 real quick. This is going to be a fun review to write.

This review will spoil episode three, as well as give minor spoilers for The Mortal Instruments books.

The bad comes first because I am a Negative Nancy:

• I’ve got very few problems with this episode but one thing that annoyed me (and I understand the show has to do for time restraints) is that characters infer things and the show expects the audience to do the same. For example, we could wonder why the entire Downworld seems to know that Clary is a Morgenstern, and it took me a while to realize Raphael and Lily (the girl who was dangling Simon in episode two) overheard the entire reveal with their super hearing. The show does have only 40-ish minutes to get through episode arcs so they can’t take little breaks to explain all these jumps and the show expects the viewer to be smart enough to catch onto these things. I just happen to be good at inferring stuff but some viewers need everything explained to them so I think the show needs to figure out how to fix some of these logic jumps.

• I had this same problem with episodes one and two but no one is explaining what a Shadowhunter is. Jace drops “you’re part angel” while talking to Clary and she doesn’t react to this??? It’s the first time she’s been informed that there’s angel blood in her and her reaction is nonexistent. Episode six is titled “Of Men and Angels” which will feature the flashback story of The Circle, and I predict the Shadowhunter origin story (Shadowhunters are literally the hybrids of men and angels), and both stories will include The Mortal Cup. The Mortal Cup will likely be found in episode seven, “Major Arcana”. So since the Shadowhunter origin is tied into the Cup, it makes sense for the two plot points to be paired together. But still, Clary should’ve had some sort of reaction to this news or the entire line should’ve been cut because nonreaders are probably super confused about it.

The good:

• There’s a whole lotta good in this episode! I LOVE that they’re not throwing all the Downworlders at us at once. For two episodes, we focused on warlocks, then in this episode we got the Seelies and vampires, and in a few episodes we’ll probably get the werewolves. These explanations are being spaced out nicely.

• They have spent three episodes with Alec having characterization that went beyond his Token Status because as of now in the show canon, the nonreaders don’t know that he’s gay. I like seeing his relationship with Jace starting to become messy, and their Parabatai bond was so much more believable than the books had it, where it seemed a bit tossed in and lacking.

• Kat McNamara’s acting is exactly where it needs to be. In my review of episodes one and two, I said there was room for improvement but I still couldn’t put my finger on what the actual problem with her line delivery was. Then I saw a tumblr post saying Kat, while playing Clary, enunciated everything like she was doing public speaking or an interview, basically talking like Kat the celebrity and not like Clary the regular teenager. So I rewatched scenes of her as Clary and I started realizing that where she was the best was where she was just letting the words flow naturally and wasn’t trying to say everything perfectly. That’s when she was the most believable. In “Dead Man’s Party,” that uncharacteristic enunciating is GONE and Kat sounds so natural and it’s just great. She’s always been great at showing the different sides of Clary, making her a good heroine, and she’s A+ at the emotional scenes she has and now I can finally fully enjoy Clary’s scenes. 

• Kaitlyn Leeb as Camille was a pleasant surprise. We didn’t see much of her in the previews or in clips so I was wary of how her portrayal would be. I never cared much for Camille in the novels so I wasn’t too concerned with what Camille was going to be like in the show. But from the minute Kaitlyn’s version of Camille spoke and came on screen, I was unable to take my eyes off of her. She was attention grabbing, bratty, and creepy as hell. Camille is a minor character but I wouldn’t mind if she gets a more major role as the series goes on.

• We’re getting all the technical stuff out of the way in one bullet. Hotel Dumort looks much fancier and less trashy than it did in the books. It looks like the type of place aristocratic vampires would actually live in. That vampire bar Jace takes Clary to is so seedy and ugly I wouldn’t walk within a mile of it. The CGI when vampires die is gold/orange like when demons die and that’s smart. If you haven’t read the books, Downworlders are either related to demons, or infected with demonic diseases. So it makes sense that their blood would react to angelic weapons how demons react to the weapons. This was a good detail to put in. The flying motorcycle scene looked a lot less cheesy than how the book described it and was actually cute and romantic rather than just awkward, like in the books.

• The fact that Luke is a cop who has pretty much adopted a daughter plays into the “my dad’s a cop and taught me self defense” trope so it’s not surprising that Clary knows how to take down a grown man without any weapons nearby. This can also speed up some of her training because she’s known how to fight humans for presumably years, plus there’s instinct, and the greatest Shadowhunter ever is helping train her. I’m looking forward to Clary’s badass evolution.

• The look Jace had when Clary killed that vampire. That was adorbz, right?

Guys, “Dead Man’s Party” was the best episode of Shadowhunters we’ve gotten so far and I don’t know how the show is going to keep improving. There’s gotta be a limit to how good it can get, right? I give the episode a 9.5 out of 10.

Shadowhunters: "The Mortal Cup" and "The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy" Review

Maxim Roy and Kat McNamara as Jocelyn and Clary Fray in Freeform's Shadowhunters

I’ve been waiting for this show for a very long time. This is the first time I’ve followed the production of a series so closely and been so wrapped up in it. I was optimistic about everything, though I had a few “I don’t know about that” moments throughout production. I knew that the first few episodes would probably be lackluster but most supernatural shows are lacking at the beginning (Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural). The beginning of a series isn’t meant to be this wild, epic thing. It’s there to introduce plots, characters, and some mythology. So anyone expecting to be blown away by the first two episodes needs to bring down their expectations to a more realistic level. This review will contain spoilers for the first two episodes of Shadowhunters. That being said, let’s rip this baby apart (please don’t rip apart an actual baby, you’ll get blood everywhere).


The bad:

- “The Mortal Cup” was… not very good. There was too much confusion, even for me, someone who read the books it was based on. We open on the Pandemonium scene and knowing that Clary’s not meant to see Jace and then we jump back to earlier then we (at a really awkward placement) jump back 10 years then we jump back to now then we go to the Pandemonium scene again. And all this happens within 20 minutes. The fight in Pandemonium was a hot mess. I could see an entire foot of space between the Shadowhunters hands and legs and the demons they were hitting. The editing in the fight was all over the place, Clary was awkwardly sliding on the ground, she inexplicably picked up a Seraph Blade, her reactions to everything were odd. Then some of the dialogue is kinda… bad. Clary calling her life “mundane,” Clary saying she’s not going on an epic journey, the random “all the legends are true” that doesn’t explain a damn thing even though Jace said it would explain things simply??

- There are a few jumps and things that aren’t explained. I’ve rewatched the episodes to see if I missed anything or if there were explanations and there weren’t. If I’m two episodes in and already seeing glaring holes, that’s not a good thing. For example, I’m assuming Dot died when Valentine stabbed her in episode 2 but she was thrown, by a Shadowhunter, through a window, hit her face on a metal gate, and then smacked into the ground and she lived. But a stab kills her? And when Clary mentions that the guy had a Circle rune? She didn’t even know what the Circle rune was? Neither did the audience? We hadn’t even met Hodge yet? Even if we saw other Circle members’ runes, Clary didn’t???? How did Jace find her house?

- It’s been two episodes of Shadowhunter this and Shadowhunter that but I don’t get why they’d explain that warlocks are half demon, half human, but not say how Shadowhunters, who the show is actually about, are half human, half angel. They’re just glossing over that right now and I feel like that should really be explained, sooner rather than later.

- It’s not really a bad thing but it’s not a good thing either. One of the things I liked about the City of Bones book was that Valentine didn’t show up until the ending and he was just talked about until that point. Sometimes having a villain appear at the beginning can be good and I guess we’ll see if that’s the case here. But when you build up a character being dangerous for multiple episodes, it makes the villain that much scarier. Like on The Vampire Diaries, season 2 took between 8-10 episodes to build up Klaus’s character so when he actually showed up on the show, it was automatically frightening. Even Jessica Jones took a couple of episodes to show us Kilgrave for the first time, though by the time we actually met his character, he was built up so much and so disturbing from just what we’d heard about him that he was 10x as nasty and gross as he would’ve been if we’d met him in the beginning. I just feel like with a character as crazy and evil as Valentine, they could’ve waited until at least episode 4 or 5 to meet him, let it stay a bit of a mystery where he was holding Jocelyn.

- I still can’t stop laughing at “demonic murders”. Like, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be funny or not. What major police force is going to label a bunch of murders as “demonic”? “Hello, ma’am, I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m investigating the demonic murders.” I didn’t think we could get a police force more campy than the Beacon Hills police. I was wrong.

The good:

- I like the idea of Shadowhunters having the younger generation not know everything about the Circle. It’s like a mysterious thing for the characters to figure out throughout the season. The show is dumping a lot of information and twists on the audience rather early on so some of the things that weren’t a big deal in the books (the characters always knew everything about the Circle in the books) can be expanded on and switched up. And I thought it was cool how they show the physical effects of Hodge’s curse by having him be hurt whenever he speaks about the Circle or Valentine. This is going to make ~something~ with Hodge that happens in the books make you feel more sympathetic towards him because one, he was being tortured, and two, you’ll wonder if he tried to prevent what he does in the end of City of Bones and tried to get some help from the other characters but he literally, physically couldn’t do it.

- In the books, I thought it was ridiculous that everyone knew Clary’s birth date and that Jocelyn would’ve had to have been married to Valentine at the point when she got pregnant and nobody thought “hey wait, this girl could be Valentine’s daughter” and in the show, I was not looking forward to a dragged out, obvious twist. But then they revealed that he was her dad in the second episode and I was so happy. This is followed up by Alec being suspicious that she’s a spy because she’s related to Valentine (not going to spoil the books but this mirrors something that happens in book 2) and Clary being like “well I just found out my dad is some psycho who’s gonna kill everybody” and I feel like everyone has a logical reaction to this.

- While reading the books (or even watching the movie *shudder*) I really couldn’t stand Alec or Jocelyn. They were just completely unlikable for me. I didn’t like Alec because he had no personality that went beyond “I hate Clary, I like Jace” and Jocelyn was just lying so much that I was like ??? Get your shit together?? In the show, Alec is an ass but he’s an ass to everyone and we can see that he’s such a rule follower and he doesn’t like deviating from plans and he always focuses on the job at hand. And he’s like this when he’s around anyone, to the point where Isabelle says he’s always so rigid so his entire characterization isn’t centered around him being jealous of Clary, much like it was in the first few books. Jocelyn tries more than once to tell Clary the truth and she feels remorse for what she did. The fact that she tried to right her wrongs actually makes you care for her and want Clary to find her.

- Episode two, “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” was a lot better done than episode one. The acting was much less over the top, the dialogue wasn’t cringy and super foreshadow-y, the characters seemed more emotive, there were more intentionally funny moments. It was just better.

- If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I was really “uhhhh” about Kat McNamara as Clary. I just wasn’t a fan of her acting and the clips and peeks we got either had her being really good or reaaaally bad. And then “The Mortal Cup” was going and I kept cringing at her line delivery and I was thinking “dear God, please just let this be because the entire episode is messy because I can’t take a whole season of this” and then I got to “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” and she was noticeably better. Of course, there’s still room for improvement but she’s much better than she was in “The Mortal Cup”.

The fuck?:

- I don’t get why Valentine isn’t in Idris? Or really just why, of all places he could hide, he went to Chernobyl? Who the fuck thinks to have a secret hideout in Chernobyl?? Take your ass to Hawaii. Nobody would look for you there.

- I’m not a fan of Luke’s werewolf eyes being green because he looks like an alien and it’s just weird.

- Is there something up with the Captain? She seems much too concerned with Clary. It could be she’s just a good family friend but I don’t know, she’s fishy.

- I don’t know why they’re having Jocelyn use the strength rune to turn invisible or to burn Clary's bedroom down?

- Who put out the fire in Clary's room? Shouldn’t the entire building have done down?

- If Jocelyn burned Clary's room, why were the Tarot cards still in perfect condition?

- I still don’t know if this show is called “Shadowhunters” or “Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments”.

Overall opinion:


- “The Mortal Cup” was alright, for all its messy glory, but “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” fixed a lot of the issues I had with the pilot. I still have a lot of questions and I still see holes and things that need to be explained in future episodes. I rate “The Mortal Cup” a 4.5/10 and “The Descent Into Hell Isn't Easy” an 8/10.

You can watch Shadowhunters (or whatever it’s actually called) on Freeform or Netflix.