Frankie, Willow’s daughter and Buffy’s play neice, is tapped to be a slayer after a tragedy hits a slayer convention. Grief stricken and unprepared, the responsibility chaffs. She wants her aunt back more than she wants to be a hero, but she’s has no choice. A great evil, an ancient vampire, The Countess, has returned to Sunnyvale to fill the vacuum left behind to reopen the hell-mouth. It’s a whole lot of the familiar against a helluva lot of new.

I really, really wanted to like this one. I loved Buffy in the 90s. I occasionally watch them today. Still, I felt like I was missing something the entire time. Fair warning: I could be the problem. I may have missed something added to the timeline between this book and the original series ending or the excessive name dropping is a shorthand that does not work for me. Even with the premise being linked to Buffy, I didn’t need them talking about her in chapters 1, 2,3, … 26, 27…. You get the picture. I just wanted to care about Frankie’s crew since I already cared about Buffy’s, but it never happened.

There’s the narration: Hollo-Christensen’s Frankie voice grates. It has a nasal quality that does not translate into the affectation she uses to project a teenaged voice. Coupled with her insufferably nauseating personality, I just can’t. It’s literally painful, and being a former teacher, I am saying exactly what I mean. Haley and her male voice are much more comfortable to my ears. Maybe Frankie was annoying to Hollo-Christensen, too, and she’s projecting or she has kids and understands. Who knows.

On the brighter side, Spike was an excellent idea. He is a much better touchstone for me than the name dropping. Soulful Spike is a bit tame for my taste. I wanted his tongue to be cutting if his teeth couldn’t bite, but he’s totally Gilesesque as a watcher. Willow isn’t quirky. Zander isn’t awkward, and Oz is no dude. Still, they are a constant presence for those who want to know ‘where are they now,’ but it’s a huge cast.

I regret not having a physical copy. I’m certain I would like it more in that case. I would also like it more if Grim, The Hunter of Thrace, a broody demon who benignly stalks Frankie in order to help her defeat the big bad is the potential love interest. The older characters even compare him to Angel, which he does remind me of without the name drop. He’s probably my favorite character.

Clearly, I have bigger feelings about this one than I realized based on the length of this review. I’ll definitely read book two. I’ve read most of Kendare Blake’s books. The execution can be hit or miss, but her ideas are always top notch. I’ll definitely get my teenage daughters to buddy read the book with me in case I’m subconsciously biased. You should do the same.

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney-Hyperion for giving me a copy of this novel in exchange for my review.

In Every Generation introduces fans of the existing Buffyverse to a new slayer and new Scoobies here to help. When slayer Vi goes missing, her watcher Spike shows up to retrieve her sister. Hailey. He brings her to Frankie and her mom, Willow, and with the help of Oz and his nephew Jake, they set out to uncover what really happened to Vi, Buffy, Faith, and all of Sunnydale's other slayers.

First of all, the first part of this book successfully made me feel about 100 years old, but Kendare Blake and I are the same age, so I hope she was just taking jabs at herself too. It was all in good fun, and I appreciated the jokes especially the nod to cult (and this reviewer's) favorite The Lost Boys. One thing Blake does really well is capture the voices of the existing characters: notably Willow, Oz, and Spike. That I assume is no easy feat since they were brought to life by actors and not authors, so that impressed me tremendously. Moreover, the new characters she introduces like vegan, eco-friendly Frankie and badass Hailey are a lot of fun. Jake even has some good quips in there too.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ALC. Sarah Mollo-Christiensen was amazing! Her voices for Willow, Oz and Spike were spot-on! I really enjoyed listening to this audiobook, and I definitely recommend it.

4.25 stars

I was so excited when I was approved for ARCs of this book; I’m a big fan of the original Buffy series, and I’ve also watched Angel and read most of the graphic novels (still working on acquiring the Angel and Faith spinoff pieces!). This new book is the start to a series that nicely blends a contemporary setting with plenty of throwbacks to the original material. I enjoyed it, and I really like most of the new characters; I also really like that most of them are, in some form, descendants of previous characters. I enjoyed revisiting Willow, Oz, Xander, and Spike. I missed some of the others, although the casual references to other characters/events from memorable episodes made me smile and appreciate this new plot line all the more. I didn’t totally love the voice and style that Spike was given…some of it was right on the mark, but other pieces just felt a bit out of character. I’m not sure if that was intentional or if I’m just overly attached to the past, and I do understand that there’s a big difference between watching a character and then reading about him. Either way, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to the continued adventures of Frankie and her friends. I’ll be adding a copy of this novel to my classroom library, and I can’t wait to see what else the writer does with the subsequent books. (I am, however, desperately hoping that the older Slayers aren’t all dead…please don’t do that to us!)