Almost Demon by AJ Salem

Almost Demon is the debut novel by AJ Salem.  It's about Gemma Pope who is the lone survivor of a car crash that killed her twin brother, Brian, and their two friends. Gemma is dealing with anxiety and survivors guilt. This causes her to exclude herself from her normal activities she did before the accident.  While dealing with the emotions of the accident, Gemma begins seeing dark, shapeless entities.  She begins to wore that she is going crazy when she sees them all over town.  Her fears subside when two new arrivals in town, Mr. Thom Flynn, her English, and Ian, her new crush, confirm that what she is seeing is real. As she develops relationships with them, Gemma discovers that her world is full of demons and angels and she is somehow caught in the middle of all of it.

At first I had a very hard time finding Gemma's voice at the beginning of the novel.  There is a lot of information and events happening with very little chance to really understand who Gemma is.  That changes quickly after the first fifty pages.  Gemma is a fatally flawed character which made me really like her.  She makes a majority of her decisions based on her emotions instead to taking the advice of those around her.   There were plenty of time I wanted to shake her or yell at her to not trust certain people.  I feel that she hasn't completely grown as a character by the end of this book.  Since this is the first of a series I'm hoping that some of her teen angst will fade as she becomes more confident in who she is.  

The biggest flaw I had was that I didn't really understand some of the ending.  I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'm going to try my best to explain.  Throughout the book Gemma is learning how to summon demons and angels in order to learn how to stop all the shadows called Dybbuk from taking over the town and possessing people.  Her teacher Thom is training her how to do this, but as she learns more about him, there are too many questions about who exactly he is.  She begins to not trust him and turns more to Ian.  However Ian also may not be who he seems.  There are several plot twist at the end that leave a lot more questions than answers.  I wanted to see a few key points of the plot answered like why were the the Dybbuk sent to Gemma's town?  What exactly was her role in all of it?  Considering how exciting the book is and the need to set up the next book it is a minor flaw in an otherwise very enjoyable   story.  I'm sure that as the series progresses all my questions will be answered, so I will just have to be patient.

Overall this is an exciting read with lots of adventure and plenty of leave the seat of your pants moments.  I'm definately going to have to read the next book just so I can find out what happens to Gemma, Thom, Ian, and all her friends.  I would recommend reading this and then comment below!  I would LOVE to chat about the book because there were lots of OMG moments.  I'm giving it 4 out of 5 stars and a couple of thumbs up.