A wickedly fun romance that doesn’t quite live up to its potential.
A woman makes a deal with a demon to win back her ex, but is her perfect match actually from another dimension?
Samantha Cooper may be having the worst day of her life. After her girlfriend, Hannah, swiftly and brutally rejects her proposal—at a restaurant, no less—she gets stuck in an elevator with a strange, unsettlingly beautiful woman. Despite her perfectly coiffed blonde hair and pretty pink dress, Daphne is a demon, and she’s here to make a deal: In exchange for her mortal soul, Samantha will be able to make a total of six wishes. Anything she wants in life, or love, can come true, once she signs her name on the dotted line. After getting past her initial doubts, Samantha attempts to exploit an obvious loophole and use one of her wishes to get Hannah back, but Daphne’s fulfillment of each wish comes with its own less-than-desirable consequence, forcing Samantha to use more wishes to get one step closer to ultimate happiness with Hannah. Naturally, it also turns out that Daphne has her own motives: Samantha’s is the last of the thousand souls she needs to collect to free herself from the deal she made thousands of years ago that turned her into a demon. As Samantha comes to the realization that getting everything she wishes for isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and faces the possibility that repairing things with Hannah won’t lead to the happiness she always imagined, her mixed feelings about Daphne give way to something much more complicated. Bellefleur’s latest romance is her most ambitious yet, with a conceit that puts a welcome sapphic spin on the classic Faustian tale. While the story is a bold, fun blend of paranormal and contemporary, the pacing does a disservice to the book’s ultimate pairing, as Samantha spends so much time plotting to win her ex back and pining over what could have been that there isn’t enough time spent on the evolution of her superior, devilishly entertaining dynamic with Daphne.
A wickedly fun romance that doesn’t quite live up to its potential.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780593952504
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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