Tempted

What's inside (9 sections)

1. After the banishing, nobody rests
2. Stevie Rae finds Rephaim in the dirt
3. Zoey, Stark, and dreams she cannot shut
4. Back to the House of Night
5. Venice and the Council
6. Heath and what breaks
7. A note on content
8. Key takeaways
9. FAQ

I came to Tempted straight off Hunted with no real break in between, because Hunted ended with a banishing that felt like a win and left everyone I cared about still bleeding. P.C. Cast published it in 2009 with St. Martin's Griffin, the 319 page first edition with ISBN 9780312567484. It is House of Night book six, and it starts almost the same night the fifth one stops. The cover credits Kristin Cast as well, and you can feel two hands on the romance threads in particular. Zoey Redbird is still the narrator for most of it, still the sixteen year old fledgling with affinities for all five elements, still trying to hold her circle together while her love life eats her alive.

You need books one through five before this one. Tempted does not explain the Imprints from scratch, or why Stevie Rae is red instead of blue, or who Kalona is and why Zoey dreams about him. If you have not read Hunted, at least read a recap of it. The first fifty pages assume you remember Stark dying in Zoey's arms, Aphrodite losing her Mark, and the tunnels under the Tulsa Depot.

What surprised me was how much of this book belongs to Stevie Rae. I expected another Zoey plus Kalona seduction story. There is plenty of that. But the chapters that stayed with me were Stevie Rae sweeping Abbey grounds, finding something hurt in the dirt, and making a choice she knows she should not make.

After the banishing, nobody rests

The book opens with that hollow feeling after a big fight. Kalona and Neferet have been driven off. Zoey and her friends are alive. That should count as victory. It does not feel like one.

Stark is hurt. Zoey is wrung out. Her grandma, Sylvia Redbird, is recovering too, and Zoey keeps checking on her the way you check on someone when you are scared the phone will ring with bad news. The Nerd Herd is frayed. Damien tries to keep lists and plans going. Shaunee and Erin snap at each other more than usual. Jack tries to keep Damien steady. Aphrodite, human now, still getting visions that knock her flat, stays close even though she complains about every blanket and every meal.

Zoey tells herself she should feel strong. She has air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. No other fledgling High Priestess has that full set. Nyx keeps favoring her. Her friends keep following her. And still she wakes up tired, because Kalona keeps getting into her dreams.

Her grandma gives her the plainest explanation in the book. Zoey carries something of A-ya, the Cherokee maiden who was shaped long ago to catch Kalona's heart and stop him. A-ya was made to love him. So Zoey feels a pull toward him that has nothing to do with sense and everything to do with old soul memory. Sylvia does not dress it up. She says rest, pray, eat, stay near people who love you. I appreciated that. In a series full of prophecies, here is an older woman saying sleep and soup matter too.

Erik finds Zoey in the middle of all this and demands time she does not have. He was her boyfriend. Now he works as Tracker for the Tulsa House of Night and acts like the title made him grown. He sulks about Stark. He sulks about Heath. He wants Zoey to pick him in words, out loud, right now. They fight and she ends it. She tells him his jealous streak scares her and she is done. It was overdue. Erik's possessive turn started in Hunted when he grabbed her too hard after she pulled away, and here he keeps score instead of listening. He later drifts toward Venus, Aphrodite's ex roommate, which honestly suits him better for now. Someone who wants the spotlight as much as he does.

That breakup drops Zoey from three boys to two, if you count only the ones she admits to. Heath is still Imprinted to her. Stark is still her Warrior, sworn and steady. Erik out does not mean calm. It means the remaining two bonds get louder.

Stevie Rae finds Rephaim in the dirt

Stevie Rae's part starts quiet and gets dangerous fast.

She is out sweeping the grounds at the Benedictine Abbey, doing normal work, trying to be useful while Zoey handles Stark and the adults argue about what comes next. In the dirt she finds a body that should not be there. Rephaim, Kalona's favorite son among the Raven Mockers, bird and boy mixed, hurt bad enough that he cannot fly or fight her off.

Every smart instinct says leave him or call Darius. Stevie Rae binds his wounds instead. She gets him hidden and sends him down into the tunnels. She tells herself it was mercy, and it was, but it was also curiosity and loneliness. She is the only red vampyre. She leads a bunch of red fledglings who look to her for proof they can grow up right. Nobody else knows what that weight feels like except, strangely, this hurt bird boy who also serves a father he fears.

Then she learns what Rephaim did. Back at the school, word comes that Professor Anastasia Lankford is dead, killed by Rephaim's hand. Dragon Lankford, the fencing master, her mate, is wrecked. Jack sits with Dragon for hours, just staying there, trying to talk him through breathing. Zoey goes to take the temperature of the school and finds grief mixed with fear. People whisper about who is safe. A few fledglings stop meeting her eyes.

Stevie Rae hears the name and feels sick. She saved the thing that killed Anastasia. She does not tell Zoey. That silence is the crack the whole middle of the book widens.

Down in the tunnels, the rogue red fledglings find Rephaim first. Nicole leads them now, sharp and mean, with a gift for looking into minds. She peers into his and sees Stevie Rae tending him. So they use him as bait. They catch Stevie Rae and shut her in a cage with him up on a roof to burn when the sun comes up. It is a cruel scene, hot metal and thirst and kids watching to see if their High Priestess begs.

Rephaim helps her at the last minute. They get underground before the light takes them. She is burned and shaking. He offers his immortal blood to heal her. She drinks. The blood does what blood does in this world. They Imprint. It hits hard and clean, and at that same moment her old Imprint with Aphrodite snaps. Aphrodite doubles over back at the Abbey in convulsions that scare everyone in the room. Zoey calls the school. Erik and Lenobia run to find Stevie Rae and drag her out. With the last of her strength Stevie Rae hides Rephaim from their eyes so they do not see him and kill him on the spot.

Hard to defend, easy to understand: Stevie Rae lies to Zoey for most of this book. She hides feedings, hides meetings, hides the Imprint. I got mad at her around page two hundred. Then I remembered she is seventeen, leading kids nobody else wants, Imprinted to an enemy son, and terrified Zoey will look at her the way everyone looked at Neferet. Her secrecy is wrong and it makes complete sense.

Zoey, Stark, and dreams she cannot shut

Zoey rooms with Aphrodite for a stretch, which gives the book some of its funniest and saddest pages. Aphrodite is still Aphrodite, all sharp comments and perfect hair in a place with bad showers, except now she has no Mark and visions that leave her pale and shaking. She warns Zoey to stay away from Kalona. Her visions keep showing ruin if Zoey goes to him.

Zoey tries. She really does. Then she sleeps, and Kalona is there.

He does not come as a monster in these dreams. He comes as a sad beautiful warrior who remembers being loved by Nyx and losing her favor. He shows Zoey his past, his service, his long burial, his hunger to be chosen again. He calls her A-ya. He tells her she is the only one who ever truly saw him. For a girl who spends her days being yelled at by boys, doubted by the Vampyre Council, and leaned on by friends, that attention works like warm wine. She wakes up ashamed and still a little lit up, which she hates.

Stark feels it. His Warrior bond with Zoey lets him sense her moods, and he climbs up to her room to sleep nearby and stand guard so Kalona cannot slip in so easy. There is a sweet stretch where he just sits awake while she sleeps, bow within reach, trying to be enough. Aphrodite gives them space and takes Darius to Stark's old room, and those two finally say out loud what the last two books circled. She loves him. She is scared she cannot love anyone right. Darius steadies her and swears his Warrior's Oath to her, freely, in front of no crowd. It is one of the few vows in this series that does not feel rushed. He saw her at her worst and stayed.

Kramisha's poems keep coming too, short bent lines that sound like jokes until they land. Combined with Aphrodite's visions, they point one way. Kalona and Neferet want the old order back, fledglings obedient, humans food, Nyx a name on a program. Twitter rumors, of all things, help Jack track where they went. Venice. The Isle of San Clemente. The Vampyre Council itself.

I liked the use of Kramisha here more than in Hunted. In the last book her poems felt like a trick to move the plot. Here Zoey actually argues with the readings, gets one wrong, and has to double back. Damien makes his lists. Shaunee jokes to cover nerves. Erin goes quiet in a way that worried me, and the book notices without pausing to explain. That quiet pays off later in the series, but even here it reads as a girl pulling away.

The criticism I have to level is about repetition. Zoey has the same dream conversation with Kalona three or four times with small changes. I get why. Temptation repeats. But on the page it drags. Dream, wake guilty, Stark asks, Zoey lies a little, Aphrodite warns, repeat. One of those cycles could have been cut and nothing would be lost.

Back to the House of Night

Going back to school should feel like relief. It feels like walking into a funeral.

Anastasia's death hangs over everything. Dragon moves like an old man. Classes meet but nobody concentrates. Lenobia keeps the stables running through pure will. Erik tries to act like a responsible Tracker and mostly manages, to his credit, when Stevie Rae needs rescue. Darius posts himself near Zoey without making a show of it. The Sons of Erebus look tired.

Zoey tries to read the room and fails at first. Some fledglings are glad to see her. Some are cold. A few repeat Neferet's line that Zoey is power hungry and young. That stung to read, because Zoey is young, and she does grab for power when she is scared, and the book lets that charge sit there instead of batting it away. Her friends close ranks, which helps her and also blinds her a little. The Nerd Herd stops hearing criticism because so much of it comes from people who already hate them.

Stevie Rae's absence is loud. She stays behind when the others prepare to travel, saying a red High Priestess should stay with the rogues. True on the surface. Under it, she cannot leave Rephaim long, and she cannot face Zoey's questions. Their phone calls go short. Zoey feels her best friend slipping and names it to Aphrodite, who has her own fresh wound from the broken Imprint and does not want to talk about Stevie Rae at all. That broken bond between two girls who hated each other and then saved each other hurt more than any boy breakup in this book.

Neferet, meanwhile, is gone from Tulsa but not gone from heads. Fledglings whisper about what she taught. Professors who stood up to her look overworked. Jack's kindness to Dragon is the best thing in these chapters. He does not preach. He brings food, sits through silence, talks about small things. It reminded me that this series is best when kids do plain care instead of spellwork.

One more gripe. The school chapters stack funerals, visions, poems, and travel prep without breathing room. A scene ends, a new warning arrives, everyone runs. After a while I stopped feeling the shocks because another one came so fast. Hunted had the same rush near the end, but Hunted earned it with slow tunnel chapters first. Tempted starts tired and stays tired, so the pileup reads as noise.

Venice and the Council

The Venice trip is the strangest and boldest part of the book, and I mean both words.

Zoey and her crew go to put their case before the Vampyre Council on San Clemente. Picture it. Teen fledglings in borrowed clothes, red eyes hidden, human Aphrodite among them, walking into old stone rooms full of ancient vampyres who think sixteen is a baby. The Council listens, barely. They name Aphrodite a Prophetess, which is real honor and real protection, and then they treat Zoey like a kid playing priestess. Age matters to them more than affinities.

Neferet and Kalona are already there, and they play the room better. Neferet claims she is Nyx Incarnate, the Goddess made flesh. Kalona stands beside her and lets people call him Erebus, Nyx's consort returned. It is blasphemy with good lighting. A few Council members look uncomfortable. Most stay polite. Power does that.

Kalona keeps working Zoey in private. He shows her memory after memory of serving Nyx, of being her Warrior, of loving her too much and falling. He promises he can change if she will have him. He says A-ya could hold him and so can she. Part of Zoey wants to believe him, not only because the old soul pull is strong but because saving him would prove she is different from Neferet. If she can redeem a monster, her own lies about boys and secrets look small. That logic is shaky and the book knows it. Aphrodite says so to her face. Stark says it with his eyes. Zoey hears them and still leans in.

The Council scenes also nail something about institutions. Nobody wants a scene. Everyone wants procedure. Zoey brings truth about murders and Raven Mockers and gets asked about tone and proof and age. Neferet brings poise and gets deference. I have sat in meetings like that, minus the fangs. It made me angrier than any dream seduction, because it felt true.

Stevie Rae stays in Tulsa through all this, which splits the book in a way I ended up liking. While Zoey argues theology in Venice, Stevie Rae sneaks blood and lies to red kids and tries to keep Rephaim alive without letting Nicole use him again. The contrast is sharp. Public holy council versus damp tunnel mercy. Both girls think they are protecting their people. Both are half right.

Heath and what breaks

Heath Luck never stood a chance in this world and the book never pretends otherwise, which is why his chapters ache.

He is human, eighteen, stuck in Broken Arrow with a truck and a mother who worries, Imprinted to a vampyre fledgling who keeps leaving him. The Imprint hums when they touch. It steadies Zoey and hooks Heath deeper. He knows about Stark. He knows about Erik. He stays anyway. Not noble, exactly. More like he cannot cut the cord and half does not want to.

In Venice, after a brutal Council session, Zoey and Heath get a few minutes. They talk about stress and school and how weird everything got. She sends him to find Stark, a simple errand. He walks into the wrong place. He finds Neferet and Kalona talking where they should not be. Kalona finds him back.

What happens next is fast and ugly. Heath uses the Imprint to call Zoey. She runs to him. She gets there in time to watch Kalona kill him. No rescue, no last minute spell. Heath dies. The Imprint tears.

Zoey does what grief tells her to do. She throws spirit at Kalona, all of it, raw. The force is huge and it costs her. Her soul shatters under the blow and flees to the Otherworld, leaving her body empty back in the real one. The book ends with her friends holding a shell and Stark refusing to leave it.

I sat still for a while after that. Heath annoyed me in earlier books, all possessive jokes and pressure. Here he is just a kid who showed up, and the series kills him for it. It works because it is permanent. Imprints in this series often get reset or replaced. This one ends in death and silence. Zoey's stringing along finally has a price she cannot talk her way out of.

That does not let the book off everything. Zoey sending Heath off alone reads as careless even in the moment, and the text barely pauses on her responsibility. The soul shatter is a hard cliffhanger that forces you into Burned, which picks up with Zoey checked out and Stark chasing her. As an ending it lands. As a trick to sell the next book it feels sharp edged.

Still, credit where due. Killing a long running love interest in book six of a teen paranormal series took nerve in 2009. Most series then kept the triangle spinning forever. Tempted snaps one leg off. Zoey chose delay for five books. Now delay is gone, and what is left is Stark grieving over a body and Stevie Rae hiding a boy who helped kill a teacher. Darkness does not win by argument here. It wins because tired kids make small selfish choices in a row.

If you love this series, read it. If book five wore you out with boy drama, know book six is heavier, sadder, and better written in the Stevie Rae parts than the Zoey parts. Bring tissues for the last sixty pages and patience for the middle dream loop. Burned is next, and you will need it immediately.

A note on content

Violence stays bloody but not lingering. Throats, burns, sun death, and one on page killing that matters. Feeding and Imprinting carry a lot of sexual charge, plus talk of jealous boyfriends and possessive touching. Erik grabbing Zoey in the last book gets named here as scary, which I was glad to see. Nothing graphic on the page, but the age gap in life experience between Kalona and Zoey is the point and it reads as grooming with wings. Younger teens should read with someone to talk to.

FAQ

When was Tempted published?

It was first published October 27, 2009 by St. Martin's Griffin in the 319-page first edition with ISBN 9780312567484. It is House of Night book six.

Do I need to read earlier House of Night books first?

Yes. Read Marked through Hunted first. Tempted continues the Kalona banishing fallout, Stark's recovery, and Stevie Rae's secrets without much recap.

Who are Zoey, Stevie Rae, Kalona, and Heath?

Zoey Redbird is the fledgling heroine. Stevie Rae is her best friend turned red vampyre. Kalona is the winged immortal who calls Zoey A-ya. Heath is her human Imprint.