By Stephanie Vance
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
This book was selected because of my love for “afterlife satires”, funny modernized stories about what happens after people die. Mostly we are doomed to some kind of corporate hell (figures) and that there isn’t much difference between heaven and hell, and the stakes are low, the romance is cozy and the vibe is wry, cynical humour. The good ones always have a few puns and dad jokes, and even some Easter eggs seeded throughout with modern pop culture references. Some readers are happy with cafes and bookstores, I like the pits of hell and demons who shit post on Reddit.
The author has come up with an interesting concept. What if humans could just temporarily “rent a soul”, a soul of morally questionable character, so that they could achieve something in life they would not normally be able to manage on their own. It could be minor, like slightly stretching the truth of their accomplishments to make them look more attractive to the opposite sex. Or maybe something a bit more devious like claiming the work of a coworker is yours, so you get the promotion. There is a always a cost to it, but it’s not like a total damnation of your soul to the pits of hell. And you could always balance out the bad deeds with some charitable work later.
Our main character, Tiffani, is a demon who is one of hell’s top sellers. She is so close to her sales goal for the quarter, and if she makes it, she will get a place in the c-suite of hell, which has all the best perks. So, she may or may not have fudged a few of the sales guidelines to get those last few sales. Unfortunately for her, she may have gone a step too far and may be under investigation. In order to fix her error, she has to ask for a little help and that help uncovers some information that no demon or angel should know about. Which puts her and her friends at risk, and fixing it only digs her in deeper and brings in various human, demon and angels together, building an unlikely but loyal and loving found family.
While Tiffani was only interested in getting her C-suite privileges, in doing so she learns what is really important to her and her afterlife. This is nothing new for these afterlife novels. As readers, we are always asked what makes someone “good” or “bad” and that most of us are somewhere in the middle and it takes a village of all kinds to make a family. Or something like that. While this is not a romance (for Tiffani, at least, some of her friends pair off) it is rather light and fluffy with the requisite feel good ending.
Overall, this is fun story of the afterworld and the idea of renting souls is a neat concept, although it is a bit overly complicated because it doesn’t really factor much in what is ultimately at stake for Tiffani and her motley crew of demons, angels, humans and hell dogs.
I rated this 3.75 stars overall, an enjoyable read, with all the puns and silly references one would expect from a book like this.
