Cara dreaded returning home from Chicago – but with no job
and no job prospects, she didn’t really have much choice but to return to the small
town of Eden
And get a job with the mysterious and wealthy Dax Allard – but an encounter with a hellhound and a strange mystical connection has made this small town far more exciting than she imagined.
I am often wary of romance in books – not because I’m
against a romance plot, but because there are so many ways a romance plot can
be written to guarantee I’ll hate it. What are those ways? Well there are
several. And they’re in this book.
All of them.
Cara and Dax meet and LOVE STRIKES! Special Woo-woo love
that means she is now his betrothed (which totally doesn’t mean the same as what
we usually mean by that word – it also includes a compulsion to murder as
well). She is dramatically attracted to him at first sight, tearful at the idea
of his rejection and neither of them can stay away from each other. No development, no character (at all), no
relationship, no interaction – just ZING INSTA LOVE FOREVER! Not only
insta-love, but she is addictive to her – even her smell (like a certain
sparkly vampire we may know) meaning it’s almost impossible for him to be
around her without a relationship happening (at least in the beginning of the
book, not so much by the end because consistency is not one of this book’s
strong points).
Dax is a demon which makes him super dangerous and deadly
to Cara – but she doesn’t care! She has known him for precisely 2 seconds and
will now be with him forever EVEN IF HE MAY EAT HER SOUL! Of course he nobly
warns her several times which she just completely ignores, maybe pausing long
enough to insist that he’d never hurt her because she just knows. She’s also
the one to keep pushing for the deadly soul eating sex because life and limb
meaning nothing to this woman.
Being a noble love interest, Dax decides to protect Cara
by staying away from her – something she takes as devastating, tearful
rejection. In a job interview. Yes because he’s a complete stranger looking to
employ her and him not doing so is enough to cause an epic tantrum of “it’s not
fair!!!!” Frankly, I wouldn’t have hired her anyway, because she went to this
interview for a job she needed and wanted and didn’t bother to research it
first – not even realising Dax was a person, not a company. She googled him
after the fact.
And while Dax is a demon he’s a super-special nice demon, not only abstaining from human souls (a demon vegetarian? Do they have golden yellow eyes) but being a special kind of demon that has SUPER BINDING LOVE.
We have a love triangle – but not really. There’s a guy,
James, who’s really into Cara but she doesn’t like him that way – so she
invites him to talk in the middle of the night, hugs him a lot and generally
keeps him hopeful and he remains on call. He constantly worries about Cara
being in an abusive relationship because Cara, well, basically keeps sending up
red flags that she’s in an abusive relationship.
Dax is super protective and/or super jealous. To the point of breaking down a fire-station door in case the firemen had kidnapped her. No. Really.
Let’s take a pause here to look at our romantic
characters Dax doesn’t have a character. He’s rich but I have no idea what he
does except give money to charity. He doesn’t seem to do anything that doesn’t
involve Cara, he’s just a big sexy cardboard cut out. Frankly, I found him
immensely dull – and if you find a demon dull then that is a very very poor
demon indeed.
And Cara makes Bella Swan look like someone with a
beautifully rich and nuanced mind (I am trying so hard not to make Twilight
analogies with this book, but really, it’s one tub of body-glitter away). No,
really. She has this vast hatred for her home town that is never explained and
quickly evaporates when it no longer serves a purpose. Her father is dead and
she blames herself for it – for reasons unknown by is useful for extra angst in
the beginning.
When the insta-love hits, everything else goes out the
window. Cara’s concern for her severely troubled mother? No longer a concern. Her
dreams of living in Chicago? Gone. Her loathing of her home town (described in
ridiculously over the top terms)? Gone. The degree she fought for, the low
means she lived with, absolutely anything in her life but Dax? Gone. Gone.
Gone. She now has a job attending parties Dax doesn’t want to go to.
The plot between the “romance”? It’s pretty weak. They
develop a rivalry with another clan of demons over a dead dog which ends up
with lots and lots of peril for Cara and some big head honcho demons called the
Astaroth sticking their noses in the relationship as well.
We also have lots of weird moments that make little sense
to me – like she’s pretty pissed at Dax and his second in command Oscar
keeping secrets from her… 4 hours at most after she met them. Why they should
tell her anything is beyond me. And Dax saves her life… so he owes her.
Somehow. He offers her money, she demands the job that he turned her down for.
She decides he’s a demon because of a big black dog with a skin like iron. She
isn’t told – she guesses based on this dog.
Let’s turn to other women in the book – don’t worry, I’m sure expectations are suitably low enough by now to ensure this won’t be too much of a shock. We have Cara’s mother – who is near catatonic after her husband’s death many years before and is badly in need of help no-one is ever going to get for her. We have Victorine, half-demon woman who hates Cara and has a pointless scene of ineptitude just to make her owe Cara. We have a prom-queen who went to school with Cara who crushes on James (hah, there’s a protagonist here, hon, all the men belong to her!) and hates Cara. And there’s an acquaintance from school who just kind of gushes on Cara and kind of exists only to be much fatter than her.
Top it off with no POC or LGBT people at all in this
book. We do have a disabled person in the form of Cara’s mother – but I think
her mental illness is just an excuse to have her not do/say/think anything and
just be there.
On a final note, I’ll say I didn’t like the format
either. This is an “omnibus” of several “episodes” that were released
separately. The whole thing is 140 pages long, which tells you how short the 5
episodes were – and part of them includes some brief recapping as well.
In all, I have to say I’m not eager to pick up the second
omnibus
