By Alexandria Bellefleur
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
I love books about Demons and the Afterlife. Give me Hades, the underworld, Thanatos, Reapers, Devils, Angels, Dante’s Hell, Death, Charon, Anubis any mythos dealing with happens, even the contemporary takes which is mostly bureaucracy and office politics, I’m already sold on the story before I even open the book.
Damned if I do is a contemporary Rom Com, about making deals with demons. The book starts with Effie, a demon whose job is LITERALLY SHITPOSTING ON REDDIT. I’m not even kidding! I have to wonder if Effie is my alter ego, as I have been known to claim that my full time job is shitposting on Reddit. Oh, I feel so seen…
(the author seems to have a very detailed knowledge of reddit. Could she be hiding in my corner of reddit, circle jerking along with us? ) We do get several examples of Effie’s work, including a fight over a recipe for peach cobbler where she claimed she substituted carrots for peaches and was disgusted at the result, blamed the baker who posted the recipe and stated that she should have been specific that carrots should not be used, and why couldn’t she use black beans instead of flour? This is S tier trolling! I tip my hat to Effie.
Effie plans on marrying Belephor, one of the 7 princes of hell, but as per usual in contemporary after life, there is paperwork and hers is flagged. It seems that due to some errant oaths, she is still technically married to her first husband. Apparently their vows overrode the “till death do us part” item, so before she can marry her demon prince, she has to go topside and get her reincarnated husband to revoke his marriage vows. Easy Peasy. Finn, her husband, has no memory of their past life, so it shouldn’t be so difficult, except that he looks and acts exactly like he did 500 or so years ago, and Effie has a LOT of unfinished business with how it all ended, mostly with her death. And Finn once he is over the shock that he is married to a demon, a very hot demon, is actually intrigued by the situation and decides he is not going to just revoke those oaths he has no memory of making.
So, Effie is stuck in small town Atlanta, among noisy gossip ladies, Finn’s loyal friends and a group of Gnomes who are causing havoc to the garden of the bed and breakfast where she is staying. So, she is forced to negotiate with the leader of the Gnomes, Gnorman (the G is silent), try to get Finn to sign off on his vows, work remotely and try to keep Belephor from sniffing around AND ignore all the heartache that had her leave Finn in the first place by most definitely not falling in love, because Demons don’t fall in love.
This novel really hits the comedy of the rom com. The romance is good as well, we got a decent spicy scene or two. There is a bittersweet scene regarding a baby, and maybe it’s my own experience, but it really got me good and had the tears flowing. But that’s for mothers I think – there is no ‘pregnancy trope’ or anything like that, although it’s discussed. I don’t really care if that turns a reader off, since if they are willing to foregore some good comedy writing and a satisfying HEA because they don’t like babies, they don’t deserve the read this book.
Overall, this book was a true delight. My only reason for not going to the full 5 stars is that I felt that there is a subplot involving Lucifer and the 7 princes of hell that felt a bit tacked on. I really liked the seven princes and there could be some great stories in the future with these characters, but it made the ending a bit rushed and pushed some of the action off page. Also, it needed more examples of shit posting.
There seems to be a book set in this universe already as there are several references to it and at least one other book coming, with different characters, so maybe there will be a 7 princes of hell spin off. At least one with Asmodeus and Satan.
