Ariel says: After what I’m sure were months and months of wild speculation about what we’ll be reading next now that we’ve finally washed our hands of serums, factions, and poorly designed experiments (oh my!), we can finally confirm that we’re going back to our beloved House of Night series.

Matthew says: We’ve seen a lot of interesting suggestions in the comments for new books, but we could use some more time to look into them to figure out which ones we really wanna do next. Also, we’ve been dying to get back to House of Night, because even with all the books we read on this blog, it’s rare we encounter writing worse than that seen in Fifty Shades of Grey.

And just like that, I can’t open my Amazon recommendations page in public for a few months.

Matthew says: It’s been about a year since we put down book two, so we figured a recap was in order for all our our long-time readers and our brand new readers. So I guess that would be all of our readers.

Ariel says: In case you can’t quite remember who Zoey was dating or what new affinity she discovered she had (“I have an affinity for creating the perfect pasta sauce! And all of the elements!”) or which of her friends was now a zombie, here’s our recap of the previous books based on just our memories and no re-reading of the books or our old posts whatsoever. It will be of questionable value.

House of Night #1: Marked

• Zoey was a normal teenage girl until a vampyre showed up at her school, touched her on the forehead, “marked” her, and she became a vampyre. Which she also was because of her genes. Both of those things. We like to read very scientifically accurate books on this blog.

• Vampyres are super common in this world. All the coolest celebs are vampyres! Also we spell vampyres that way. Spell check hates it.
• Zoey’s horrible best friend Kayla and NOT-BOYFRIEND Heath are like totally freaking out about Zoey becoming a vampyre. Zoey leaves regular, boring high school to attend a vampyre high school – the House of Night.
• Before going to vampyre school, Zoey lived with her mom and stepdad. Zoey’s family is terrible except for her Native American grandmother who says spiritual things about goddesses. Which are also vampyre goddesses. Both of those things.
• Zoey makes awkward asides about everything. Most of the time they are super judgmental and laden with dated and stupid pop culture references.
• At the House of Night, she makes friends with two girls that are so indistinct that they just call each other twins and talk about how one is black and the other is white. Diversity!
• They have a gay friend named Damien, and you would think that this would not have to be pointed out every time Damien is mentioned, but it is. More diversity!
• There is also a friend from the South named Stevie Rae who is diverse because of her southern accent.
• Zoey meets Aphrodite and her posse, who have given themselves names like “Devil” because this series is not known for its subtlety. Zoey accidentally witnessed Aphrodite giving/trying to give someone a blow job, and now Aphrodite is the secondary antagonist because good girls should never do such depraved things and obviously she is evil. This is actually what happens.
• Aphrodite and her posse run some sort of sorority/cult at the House of Night and lead rituals. Everyone in this series is constantly involved in a ritual, which is somewhat preferable to reading about serums all the fucking time.
• Neferet, Zoey’s mentor and House of Night headmistress, is mysterious and has an affinity for cats. WHICH SO DOES ZOEY BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD AT EVERYTHING. Neferet is also totally not evil haha why would you even think that? That comes up later so shhh.
• Heath keeps trying to see Zoey, and she winds up imprinting on him somehow, which is a vampyre thing that happens and is sort of love but isn’t. So he’s obsessed with her and they communicate telepathically and she touches his boner sometimes with her mind. Again, this is actually what happens.
• Erik Night is the hottest guy in school (who Zoey saw getting head from Aphrodite! Awks!). He wants to be with Zoey even though Aphrodite totally wants him back, and also he’s an actor or some shit. He’s gone like the whole second book because he’s at a Shakespeare tournament or something. He doesn’t do much in the first book either. Just know that boys want Zoey. Also, even though he clearly could have stopped Aphrodite from giving him a blow job, Zoey is much more forgiving of Erik than she is of Aphrodite. Zoey always be slut shaming.
• Some students die at the House of Night due to strange, sudden circumstances. Zoey later sees weird ghost-like people in the House of Night that look like them. Zoey ignores this until book two.
• Professor Loren Blake is the vampyre poet laureate (as opposed to the poet laureate, which I guess is not the same), as well as the poetry teacher at the House of Night. Zoey wants to bone him. And he wants to bone her. It is weird and uncomfortable for all of us.
• The first book ends with Zoey stopping Aphrodite from unintentionally summoning evil ghosts – which are another thing entirely from everything you’ve read about so far – during a bad ritual (it’s bad because it’s too sexy or something). Then Neferet appears and tells Zoey that she’s special and tells Aphrodite that she isn’t special. And that was a book.

House of Night #2: Betrayed

• Since the last books, Aphrodite has been stripped of her position of the leader of the sorority/cult-thing, which is now Zoey’s role. Aphrodite has also lost her magic vampyre power of being able to see tragedies before they are about to happen. Neferet claims that the vampyre goddess Nyx has taken them aware from her, but we can totally trust Neferet about that! Haha why wouldn’t we! WHY, I ASK.
• We also start to become more sympathetic towards Aphrodite because she has really mean parents. Her dad is apparently the mayor of Tulsa or something. She also reveals to Zoey that Neferet has ignored her visions in the past when human deaths are involved.
• Back in the human world, local high school football players are disappearing. They are later found with puncture wounds and drained of blood. Suspicions naturally turn to the vampyres at the House of Night. Tensions build.
• Speaking of tensions building, Zoey is now juggling her vampyre boyfriend Erik Night, secret rendezvous to consensually drink the blood of her human ex-boyfriend (not NOT boyfriend, suddenly, somehow) Heath, and flirting with her teacher. In case this is all too subtle, Zoey is one hot commodity.
• Zoey goes into town to go shopping for new clothes that fit her “weird” and “out there” sense of fashion, and goes to American Eagle. This has nothing to do with the plot, but it still says everything you need to know about Zoey and House of Night somehow.
• Aphrodite has a vision of a bridge collapse and begs Zoey to help her. Zoey is reluctant to believe her until Aphrodite mentions that Zoey’s grandmother dies in the collapse. Zoey and her friends call in a fake bomb threat and this shuts down the city and stops the accident from happening in some way. Zoey learns that Aphrodite hasn’t entirely lost her powers, but Neferet wouldn’t LIE about such a thing!
• Zoey is in charge of the vampyre sorority thing and comes up with some ideas for community service and stuff. Neferet reveals her hand that she is totally evil by publicly claiming credit for Zoey’s ideas. For a high school club. This is the actual plot twist that happens.
• Zoey appoints all of her friends to be members of the vampyre sorority (which I now remember includes Damien, so I guess it’s not a sorority, but I’m googling it at this point), and they each have an affinity for a different element.
• Stevie Rae dies.
• Heath disappears, and Zoey uses their imprint to go find him. She discovers that he’s been taken captive in the sewers by the undead versions of the dead House of Night students, who have been kidnapping the high school football players. Among them, she finds the undead Stevie Rae, who appears to have regained none of her human personality, such as her Southernness.
• Zoey and Heath escape by subduing the undead with the power of love. I’m like 96% sure. Also people were hiding behind potted plants and revealed themselves just in time to save the day.
• Neferet tries to wipe Zoey’s memory to hide her evil army of undead before she talks to the human police about what happened with the sewers and the missing high school football players, but it doesn’t work because Zoey is too special. The book ends with Zoey telling Neferet that she totally knows she’s evil.

And with that, uh, explanation, tomorrow we go back to the House of Night for book #3: Chosen. Maybe because this is the book where Zoey finally chooses who she’s going to fuck already.