Derek Landy makes it dark and violent. Not a surprise... I wish we could all heal like his characters. This book was a bit slower than the first one, more concentrated on the location, and I'm not sure how I feel about the romantic explorations (because for it to be a "good" book in the 21st century, it needs to have some diversity, so let's just shove it down readers' throats... but was that really necessary?.. who knows). Three stars for now.

A decent YA read that is skewing towards older readers. I have always appreciated Landy's writing style from the Skulduggery Pleasant series, and so started the Demon Road trilogy in 2019 with an exciting, larger book that followed the teenager Demon-on-the-run Amber and her associate Ghost Highwayman Milo across the Dark Roads of America. This second book picks up straight after that, and I appreciated the recaps of key previous events through monologues and conversation. This time however, Landy settles the story in the town of Desolation and introduces two new POVs, the elderly citizen Virgil and a human good guys crew featuring Kelly. Unfortunately, Landy's distinct quippy writing style comes to the surface and seems to be applied to many characters, both in the POVs and town citizens, and sometimes the lack of description + use of many names left me with vague impressions of certain characters. He definitely knows how to make others stand out though, especially the villains, and whilst the central mystery was rather simple to unpack (view spoiler)[Hell night is the purge with demons (hide spoiler)], I enjoyed the questions surrounding them as well as various individuals' involvement and dubious moralities in regards to Desolation Hill. Apart from a pretty average story with very detailed cannibalism and visceral violence, I was also surprised by two beats that I thought were not developed enough beforehand: (view spoiler)[Amber being a lesbian/ bi(?), which also strangely puts this as one of my first LGBT reads with a main character (excluding possibly The Apollo Trials series). Then, the ending of Amber signing her soul to Astaroth to work for the Devil that was meant to be shocking but failed to impact me strongly. (hide spoiler)] Overall, looking forward to finishing the trilogy and hoping for more of the first book's message and drive.