REVENGE OF THE EVIL LIBRARIAN is a fantastic follow-up to THE EVIL LIBRARIAN - i think I even liked it more. And, having been to theater camp (without demons), I felt right a home in the story. Such great characters!

Not as strong as the first book, but it was still a page turner. The world building was strong and the characters were fun. A great combination of supernatural suspense and musical theater.

This is a second in a series and compared to the first, a pretty decent second book in a series. I really enjoyed the first and this was not quite as good but was a good second. Can't wait to read more!

Revenge of the Evil Librarian had an enjoyable mix of humor with the horror The sequel is filled with teen drama, humor and a bit of supernatural horror. Revenge of the Evil Librarian will definitely be a popular read. I'd recommend this book to readers who enjoy humor, horror and teen dram with a supernatural twist.

ARC-Netgalle

I actually really loved the first book but it has been a while since I read it so it took some time getting into this one. I still enjoyed it enough and love the authors writing style.

So. Much. Fun! Seriously, I love these books and am so pleased that Knudsen came back to her readers with a follow up. I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to all of my favorite characters yet and this one was just as entertaining as the first!

Reviews posted on Goodreads, Amazon, B & N and V's Reads: https://vsreads.com/2017/03/31/cephalopod-coffeehouse-march-2017-revenge-of-the-evil-librarian/

Cynthia Rothschild is off to have a fantastic summer of theatre camp, designing sets that will (hopefully) earn her a “Tony”. Her sweet, sexy and swoony boyfriend, Ryan, has been attending this camp for years. Years! And he’s sure Cyn will love it. Except, well, he neglects to mention his camp bestie, Jules, is a beautiful, talented female lead. And, Jules isn’t best pleased to meet Cyn–especially as she and Ryan have been texting/emailning over the past seven months and Ryan didn’t think to mention Cyn, or having a girlfriend, at all.

Yeah, so, teen romance drama is on the program, naturally, but this all becomes complicated when Cyn spots a demon in residence, in fact, he’s Peter, camper-writer of the musical Cyn’s been slated to stage. Peter admits to being a demon–but a good one!–who’d never kill anyone and gains his energy from the everyday drama of human relationships. He’s getting a feast off the Cyn-Ryan-Jules thing. Also, Cyn’s demon-repelling powers are in high demand with the demoness who assisted Cyn by destroying Mr. Gabriel, the evil librarian of the first book. As much as Cyn wants to deny the possibility, the book is titled “Revenge of the Evil Librarian.” Expect Mr. Gabriel to come back. What he lacks in style and substance, he makes up for in sheer malevolence. Even Annie’s at risk again, until Cyn can come clean about all her secrets and get her friends on board for a demon-take-down.

Ryan and Cyn struggle with trust issues, Peter’s eager to step-in as Cyn’s leading man, and demons, demons, lots of scary demons. The tension isn’t quite so high as the first book in this series, but there’s a lot more of the demon world, and the stage has already been set for murder and mayhem. Ahem. I really liked how Cyn owned her foibles and gave her focus to the most important issues: saving the humans, first. The rest of the emotional problems–hurting Ryan, losing friends, keeping her sights off the sexy flirting demon playwright–had an appropriately lowered focus, so it didn’t seem cartoonish. The pace is tense, the battles are gruesome and the enemies are many and horrific. I couldn’t stop turning the pages by the end.

I had fully intended to read the first "Evil Librarian", being a library paraprofessional, but it was one that slipped by me in the midst of last year's season of sequels. I am going to be sure to rectify it, because even without having read it, I completely enjoyed my time spent in and out of hell with Cyn and Ryan. The summer camp setting mixed with theatre geekery was completely unexpected and a delight. The teens had an appropriate amount of drama caused by not-talking (meaning I believed it but wasn't entirely infuriated) and Cyn even had a growth moment or two. I'd recommend to fans of King Dork, Tim Federle, and "The Rest of Us Just Live Here".

To this day I think Evil Librarian is one of the most underrated books on the planet. It’s sassy, snarky, hilarious, and completely original from start to finish. I mean, how many books do you get to read that include musical-theater-obsessed demons trying to take over the world… but not until after they’ve seen a high school performance of Sweeny Todd?

It’s one of those quirky reads you only come across once in a lifetime, and I am a HUGE fan. So the second I saw that there was a sequel coming out this year I HAD to get my hands on it and requested an ARC immediately.

I want to say that this book is as good as the first, but I’m afraid I can’t. Is it still a fun read? Sure, for the most part. But it’s slow, the plot feel recycled, and the characters are all on drama-overload. Cyn is a lot less fun to follow here, and her relationship with Ryan has very little of that electric sizzle it had in book one.

Really, the inclusion of Peter was probably the best part – I thought he had ten times the personality of Ryan in this book – and I loved, as always, the constant homage to musical theater history. The Scarlett Pimpernel is such an obscure show to focus on, but I love it and I loved seeing it get some well-earned love here.

If you liked the first book, this might be worth picking up, so long as you keep your expectations measured. I still thought it was worth the read, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to find it didn’t live up to my super high Evil Librarian expectations. Where Evil Librarian was like a speaker amped up to 11, Revenge stayed at a steady and respectable “it’s a school night” volume. I’d definitely recommend it (and the whole series) to middle grade readers, but I think many adult readers will feel let down by this sequel.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

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I would say that most librarians are misguided rather than evil. Nice little YA book.

What teenager wouldn't love to say a teacher/librarian was a demon, especially if they could say they were the one who helped rid the school of said teacher/librarian? Read all about it in this second book in the series.

I adored the first book in this series because of its sassy narrator and Buffy the Vampire-esque style. This second book didn’t have quite as many fun, laugh-out-loud moments, but it was still a really good read. In this installment, Cyn is trying to go back to “normal” life after her run-in with demons. She’s now dating Ryan, the boy of her dreams, and they’re headed off to musical theater camp together (pretty much a dream come true for her). But, of course, her past and the demon world catch up with her in unavoidable ways, and she soon finds herself once again battling evil. If she can figure out who’s actually evil.

I kind of wished that Cyn would have been more honest and upfront with Ryan so we could have avoided some of the boyfriend drama (though that drama did end up playing an important role in her battle against demons, oddly enough), and I missed a little bit of the charm that the last book had for me, BUT as a musical theater lover, I was super connected to the fun camp setting and to Cyn’s connection to theater. I also still found Cyn to be a sassy and snarky narrator—a style that gets me every time. This installment got 4/5 stars from me.

The second book continues in the same vein, lots of amusing jokes and drama. Cyn continues to do all for her friends, even when her choices were perhaps not the best. The theater camp setting was amusing, although some what unrealistic in my view. If a camp like that exists, I would love to go there. I continue to root for Cyn, even when she was making poor decisions. She did some growing in this book in learning about her motivations for what she does. Her relationship with Ryan is still adorable and he is a great guy. Even when Ryan was mad at her you could tell that he still really cared for her and would be there when she needed him. I also enjoyed meeting Peter, a 'good' demon. His role in the plot was awesome and I hope we get to see more of him in the future. A solid second story in the series and I look forward to the third. Hopefully we won't have to wait 3 years!

Cynthia and her BFF, Annie, have finally settled down after the events from Evil Librarian (#1), where Mr. Gabriel, the librarian in question, tried to make Annie his demon bride. Cyn's now dating her crush, the gorgeous Ryan Halsey, and the two are off together to drama camp, where Cyn's hoping to start working on set design. She's ready to embrace the summer and all it has to offer, especially with Ryan at her side, but the demons have other plans: Aaron, demon-ish consort of the demon queen, looks Cyn up and reminds her that she owes the queen a few favors, for one. And things with Mr. Gabriel may not be quite over just yet.


Revenge of the Evil Librarian is the follow-up to 2014's Evil Librarian, and it keeps a lot of the fun tone set in the first novel. There are demons at a theatre camp, a romantic rivalry, and a showdown to remember. Cyn is head-over-heels for Ryan, and the ups and downs of their romance - impacted by the fallout from the first book - will appeal to YA romance readers. Peter, another camper, is an endearing character whose background will crack readers up, and Jules, Ryan's longtime summer camp "friend", is the classic romantic rival.


Liven things up with your drama/theatre club readers and pair this with Stephanie Kate Strohm's Taming of the Drew. If you've got readers who enjoyed the first one, they'll love this one (and wait for the next one); if you have readers who enjoy their YA with a smidgeon of paranormal or horror, booktalk this one.

Cyn and Ryan go to theater camp for the summer, where they are excited to put the demon-infestations of the school year to rest. When they arrive at camp, it seems that Ryan has been keeping a big secret—beautiful actress Jules, who seems to think that she is his girlfriend. Secrets don't just rest with Ryan, however. Cyn hasn't told him about the return trips to demonworld that she has to make as part of her bargain with the demoness queen. And when people start to go missing and Cyn discovers a demon uncomfortably close to her friends, she begins to worry that her troubles might start all over again.

It's a rehash of the events of the first book, but at theater camp. There's a lot of Old Cyn/Current Cyn thoughts, which got annoying, and an uncomfortable amount of "he's my boyfriend" whining/bragging/sighing or whatever. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as entertaining as the first one. (view spoiler)

If you loved the first one and have an undying passion for musical theater, set design and The Scarlet Pimpernel then this might be the book for you.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

(slight spoiler, maybe?)
I read the first book so that I wouldn't be lost reading this one - though I think this would stand on its own fine. Enough information is given to fill you in on the history, and it's interspersed throughout, there's no info dump, so even if you've just finished book one like I had, you won't be having to skim or even skip over entire paragraphs because they're just back story. That was well done, and it's something not many authors do well. Kudos!

But a theatre-loving demon! Musical theatre at that!! And he isn't evil. It's quite possibly my favorite thing between the two books. With the first I loved that Cyn is so heavily involved in theatre, and she's backstage (set design). As a theatre lover myself, and finding myself on stage occasionally, it was a cool character to see. But Cyn is definitely upstaged by Peter. You just can't beat that.

Everything in the story feels like it's happening the way it's supposed to; even though it's a supernatural story, it still feels grounded and organic. I put that down totally to the characters. Cyn is our narrator again, at theatre camp with her boyfriend Ryan, and their relationship works. There's conflict, of course, but it isn't manufactured for the purpose of piling bad things on the main character. It all makes sense within their history and the current story.

I don't know if the published version will have this or not (or maybe there's an extras section on the author's website?), but I really would have loved to see sketches of Cyn's set design (would have loved to have seen it for the first book too, for the chair in Sweeney) and how the author envisioned the natural demonic forms.

I was so happy when I saw there would be a sequel, I couldn't wait to dive into another Evil Librarian adventure. Knudsen hasn't ran out of steam; her humour, fast-paced narrative still flows wonderfully. I even liked this one better than the first. Hope she keeps bringing more fun, awesome books like this one!
4 out of 5 stars

I read and enjoyed the first one, so I requested this without reading the synopsis and just read blind...and I was a bit disappointed.

Cyn is a good person. She is loyal to her friends and wants to help and protect them. She does that by making their decisions for them and taking their choice away. That got pretty old pretty quickly. She did snap out of it, but coupled with her whiny and dramatic inner monologue this time around, I struggled to stay interested.

The plot line is filled with drama. Some of it works for the story, but everything was about Ryan being Cyn's boyfriend. I get they it was an exciting happening, but I don't need to be reminded of it every 2 pages. {Perhaps this is a case of my not being the demographic?}

Overall, this book didn't seem to have the fun, campy atmosphere the first one did. I debated DNFing; however, I was curious about the ending. If there is another book, I doubt I'll be reading it.

**Huge thanks to Candlewick Press and NetGalley for providing the arc free of charge**