Review: "Sign of the Slayer" by Sharina Harris

Sign of the Slayer by Sharina Harris
Published August 2023 via Entangled: Teen
★★★

Conceptually, I love this: inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and numerous other bits of pop culture, Sign of the Slayer envisions something more modern (and frankly a hell of a lot more diverse). Raven's life in Texas is nothing out of the ordinary—until that all gets blown to hell, and she's hauled off to a sort of slayer academy to learn to slay and survive.

But in practice, I found this a bit of a struggle. The author clearly had so many ideas here—I imagine fingers flying on keyboard, stopping to gulp some cold coffee and jot down notes for later in the book, and then back to it—but I ended up wishing that the book would slow down and give things time to develop. At school, for example, Raven promptly learns that she's extra special (not just slayer powers, but weirdly powerful and useful slayer powers), so instead of starting to learn how much she doesn't know, she mouths off a lot, disobeys directions, uses a sledgehammer whenever a scalpel would be most useful, and is rewarded for it in the form of immediate induction to the inner circle. (And then the book kind of moves on from the whole "slayer school" concept.) Maybe if this had been broken into two books, with the first one spending more time with Raven learning things and having to get her power under control...? I'm not sure, but I could have used a bit less of a romance focus and a bit less chaos.