Book Review: Death, Doom, and Detention by Darynda Jones

With new purpose, I worked the back of the frame off and took the picture into my hands. I was going to lean back against my headboard, take deep breaths, and concentrate. But the moment my fingers touched the picture, I tumbled inside. The sheer curtain drifted apart and I found myself standing in the hospital room while Mom and Dad studied the infant me.

I was sound asleep, probably due to lack of oxygen from being cocooned, as Dad wiggled my chin with a fingertip. “Just like my father’s,” he said, and I couldn’t have explained the pride that welled inside me if I tried a thousand years. My incorporeal chest welled in emotion.

My parents were right there. Right in front of me. So close, I could almost touch them. I wanted so much to run to them, to thanks them for everything. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but could I breathe here at all? In this place of void?

I wanted to stand there forever and bask in their presence. It was like they were back. They were with me. But I had no way to pause the moment, and it slid forward despite my every desire to the contrary.

Mom stopped her cooing and looked over at Dad. “We should tell her when she’s older.”

I stepped closer. Tell me what?

Dad gave her a sad look. “It’s not our secret to tell,” he said, shaking his head. “Besides, what good would it do her to know the truth? To know that he’s alive?”

What? Who’s alive? What truth?

“I think I have this thing figured out,” a man said, and just as Mom and Dad looked up, the bright light flashed and I was back on my bed, the picture in my hands, Brooke mumbling something about duty and how spying was a noble tradition. Just look at James Bond.


In the second book in the Darklight series, Death, Doom, and Detention picks up where Death and the Girl Next Door picks up. Lorelei knows that she’s the Prophet and with her friend Brooklyn is trying to focus and harness her abilities in order to protect those that she loves and save the world. Meanwhile, Satan’s second in command took over her body when she was six, and living with that fact is a little daunting.  And she’s got a huge crush on the Angel of Death. But what is that when forces are still trying to kill her, and somehow they turn the most powerful being on earth against her?

Finally working on her abilities instead of ignoring them, Lorelei is working on expanding her abilities from passive visions to visions from photographs. With Brooklyn pushing her, she discovers that her parents were hiding secrets from the time she was born- but were they right to hide those secrets? And while Cameron and Jared seem to have solved their differences, the mysterious conflict between Cameron and Glitch continues to make things difficult. However, when Jared disappears then comes back turned, and their enemies draw closer and Lorelei’s visions grow darker, everyone must draw together in order to survive.  Definitely for those who have read Death and the Girl Next Door (you’ll be lost without it). 3.5 out of 5 starts. As of March 22, Goodreads rates Death, Doom, and Detention as 4.18 stars.

Filed under: Angels, Book Reviews, Darynda Jones, grim reaper, Paranormal Romance, visions