The New Kid by Temple Matthews

Temple Matthews, a screenwriter of family focused TV shows and movies, introduces us to Will Hunter in his new novel, The New Kid . Will Hunter appears to be just another normal sixteen year old boy who's parents just can't seem to live in one place for too long. Transferring between five different schools within two years all over the country, Will has perfected the art of being the new kid in his high school and blending into the masses, drawing as little attention to himself as possible, so he can focus on his mission, which is in fact, demon hunting. Will is a third generation demon hunter, and like his father and grandfather before him, shares his secret with no one, not even his mother. However, this time around his routine starts to change, he finds himself letting people in on his world, the shy geek named Rudy, and the vibrant and strong Natalie, who ends up being a love interest as well for Will, and having a twin sister who was one of many teens in the area who have disappeared.

During the story we find out that Will's father was kidnapped in front of Will by a very large demon when Will was eight years old and was still unaware of his father's alter ego. Before his father was taken, he gave Will a coded book that he instructed was not to be opened until his thirteenth birthday. Young Will followed the instructions, and on his thirteenth birthday, everything changed. Will learned about his destiny and as puberty rolled in, found himself with new qualities such as supercharged hearing and strength, time bending speed, and a heightened sixth sense of intuition. Learning all he needed to know from the book left by his father, Will secretly trained and outfitted himself with all the tools necessary to successfully fight demons. Manipulating several elements in his life through the money he cleverly earned by creating and building the best selling video game Demonhunter, Will is able to move his mother and stepfather around the country to where ever he finds demon energy gathering. In this book we join him right after he has just moved to his fifth location, Harrisburg, Washington, in his hunt for the Dark Lord aka, the Devil.

When I encountered this book at Borders, I took it to be a story that was similar to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a supercharged teen hunting the evil paranormals in secret while trying to maintain a normal appearance in high school. Complete with the two sidekicks, Natalie and Rudy, and the oblivious mother, April. While the storyline was fairly cookie cutter, the strong and independent Will quickly grabbed me from the beginning and kept me reading. His morals shone through in his day to day fight between good and evil, his love for his mother, captive father, and friends being a fairly family oriented theme throughout the story and consistent with Matthews past works. Another fantastic element were the fight scenes, all written out step by step so you could really see Will in action, I feel the author was strong in his abilities to write these, perhaps due to the fact that he is a screenwriter. I also really enjoyed the author's descriptions of the "demonteens", innocents who succumbed to the Devil for material needs and became evil, you could just feel the hate and despair coming off the pages.

While I did enjoy the storyline and the characters, the writing style left some lingering doubts on whether I should recommend this book or not. At times it was very childish, some of the phrases outdated and over the top. Matthews also utilizes the third party narrator method which was lost on me at times. There were also crucial pieces to the plot that Matthews chose to reveal later in the story rather than earlier, that made things a little too unbelievable at times. For example Will constantly has excess amounts of money and extremely high tech equipment throughout the book, however we don't discover the source of his income until about halfway through. Will also has the ability to somehow design and build all these elite demon hunting tools yet the author never explains how Will has the skill and knowledge to achieve this.

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoyed the stories of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who read Young Adult Fiction, and who are looking for a fast and entertaining read. Just don't let the writing style throw you, the story really is much better than the writing eludes too. As of yet there have been no announcements for a sequel to this book, while it would be a great first book of a series, it also does a fairly good job of tying up all the story lines making it a solid stand alone novel. It is also a Borders exclusive and can only be purchased at Borders or Waldenbooks.