Supernatural – Nonfiction and Nonsense

Love At First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi

I have never truly done spooky reads in the month of October, but this year I wanted to start making that a new tradition for myself. If you frequent my blog you will see that I did get a bit sidetracked this month, but I finally got around to reading a book that was on theme for the month. I don’t know if this genre is a large one, or if it even exists, but I am going to say that this book falls in the cozy, spooky, romance category.

Rosemary can see and interact with ghosts, the gift runs in her family. Not many people know, just those closest to her, and her ability doesn’t have much of an effect on her daily life. Rosemary has become a successful writer, one of her books was picked up by a production studio and is being made into a movie. She agrees to go to England at the request of the production company so they can pick her brain while filming, but she mostly goes because she believes that the lead role has been miscast and she wants to see if there is anything she can do to change the director’s mind. Ellis, a world famous movie star, has a resume full of starring roles in action flicks, and personal life to match. Rosemary doesn’t think that the tall, tan, and handsome Ellis will be able to convincingly play the thin and reserved male character from her story. Rosemary’s ability to see ghosts does come into play later in the book.

I was anticipating the spice to be spicier since a major plot point is Rosemary going on and on about how badly she wants a man to dominate her. Ellis is honestly a very respectful and playful dom, which I appreciated. But with the way Rosemary reminisced about her disappointing doms of the past I was expecting the intimate moments between them to go a little bit harder, a lot harder actually. It was mostly verbal domination, making her follow his orders, and not so much the hardcore physical domination that I feel like most people would associate with the word. In other words, I feel like I was a little bit misled. I expected fire and I got an electric blanket that was on the lowest setting.

So the book ended up being a cozy ghost story with romance on the side. I would read it again, it was pleasant enough. But now that I know that it is a little bit vanilla in the spice department I will only reach for it when I am in the mood for something that is lower in intensity. I would say that this is a good book for someone who is curious about the romance genre, I would call it introductory level in regards to spice.

I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

Fiction

This novel is a unique first person perspective from the view of the devil, Lucifer. Out of Hell, living in the body of a man who recently decided to commit suicide, Lucifer is taking a holiday under the guise of considering an offer from God. If Lucifer can live for one month free of sin in the body of this human man, he can remain in the man’s body for the rest of the vessel’s mortal life and return to Heaven at the end of it. Oh, and he has to ask God for forgiveness first too.

The Lucifer in this book is a version I have never seen depicted before. He’s not as evil as you might think, he doesn’t spend all his time torturing those who are sent down to his domain. He seems to love spreading his influence more than anything else, whispering in the wind with the hopes of getting mortals to act on their terrible thoughts. He is proud of the fact that more souls get sent to Hell than to Heaven, and from what he says it’s not even a close race. Even though his entire existence is spent in constant, excruciating physical pain, he would never go back to God’s rule under any circumstance. But when the offer that God places before him means getting a reprieve from that pain, he pretends to seriously consider the offer just so he can have a little vacation.

The book is written without chapters, just constant narration from Lucifer, and he is a real chatterbox. There are occasional conversations between Lucifer with either humans or angels, but mostly the novel consists of the devil reflecting on the entirety of his existence, from creation to the present. He goes over what he considers some of his greatest moments, what parts of the story we got wrong, time, and various other eternal worldly things. It was a lot at times, but it was interesting. I especially enjoyed his monologue on Eve. But what made me change my mind about enjoying the book to not being sure I liked it had to do with the ending.

The entire story was not ambiguous at all, everything was spelled out very clearly, until you got to the very end. I spent entirely too much time after finishing the book trying to confirm my uncertain conclusion that Lucifer returned to Hell once he left Gunn’s body. At the end of his trial period he was given the choice to return to Heaven, if he would do the unthinkable and ask God for forgiveness. It was pretty clear to me, due to the many times throughout the novel Lucifer stated that he had absolutely no intention of doing that, that he would be staying true to his word. Even when Rafael tried to intervene by revealing to Lucifer what God was considering, he still refused. Some may say this is unreasonably, dangerously, stubborn of him, but I am kind of impressed with how true to himself Lucifer was. Lucifer made a lot of really good points as to why he never regretted what he did and why he wasn’t willing to go back to living under God’s rule. I’m on his side.

But while I think it is pretty clear where he ended up, it wasn’t entirely crystal to me whether or not Lucifer made a side quest before returning to his kingdom. It was never mentioned if Lucifer could travel to Heaven at all, with the intention of just speaking to God or one of the angels, not for the purpose of returning. If Lucifer wanted to make a deal with God, as opposed to what occurred here, is it something that could have happened?

In any case, Gunn has a lot to deal with once he gets placed back into his body. And I’m not saying this in a, oh can you imagine the mess he had to deal with once he wasn’t possessed anymore way, but in the fact that you do actually get a few pages from Gunn’s perspective at the conclusion. And from the third to last line of the book, which I will not spoil for you, I think he was mildly aware, or at least had a pretty good idea, of what happened to him while he was in limbo.

Gothikana by RuNyx

Fiction

As much as I love deep diving into a series, sometimes I just want a standalone romance novel. This was everything I was looking for. I think the last time a standalone romance left me this satisfied was back when I read Nocticadia many, many months ago. I feel like at this point in time, with science fiction fantasy romance being very trendy, it is difficult to find a good solo book, as I feel like many authors are trying to get on the epic series train. I appreciate the authors that aren’t jumping on the bandwagon and just sticking with writing good stories. RuNyx hinted that there was the possibility of an additional novel in the future, I think that I would be fine if Corvina and Vad’s story ended here. There were mentions of what their future was going towards, and while where they were headed next was definitely something I would want to see, they were planning for something that I know I would not be interested in.

Corvina is a young woman headed to university for the first time. Although she is a few years older than your typical college student, she has lived a very sheltered, solitary life. Her interaction with other people has been very limited and she prefers to exist in the background. Despite trying to remain on the edges of college society, one person can’t take his eyes off of her. She tries to avoid him, but there is something almost chemical drawing them together.

So this story contains forbidden college romance, dorming and classes in an ancient, mountain top castle, spooky woods and a placid lake, troubled pasts, mysteries, a secret society with malicious intents, and so much more. I could literally not have asked for anything else in a book, this had everything I love and everything I wanted. It did contain the much abhorred virgin trope, but I found myself not being bothered all that much by it in this instance. I guess the story was just that good for me that I was able to overlook it. I know not many of you come here and read my reviews, but if you have any book suggestions that are similar to Nocticadia and Gothikana, please let me know, I would love to find more books like these.

Opposition by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fiction

There is a vastly different feel between Opposition and its preceding book Origin, its desperation and urgency unlike before. The first hundred or so pages can have you feeling pretty hopeless and almost as heartbroken as some of the characters. And once the first set of conflicts work themselves out, it’s almost non stop action, lust, or strategizing. At times I felt like things were going a bit too fast, but maybe that is just because I was reading so fast because I was so very into the story. The conclusion is pleasant, perfect for people who love a happy ending, but it does leave you wishing that the author had given you a little bit more.

So if you do love the Lux series, and you are craving more, there is good news. There is an additional book written from the perspective of Daemon which takes place between Obsidian and Opal and I will definitely be reading this. I really enjoyed the joint perspective of Katy and Daemon in Origin and Opposition, which was both necessary and worked really well, in contrast to the first three books coming from only Katy’s point of view, so I would like to hear the story from the beginning from Daemon’s perspective. In addition to this, there is another novel about the Arum, and another series about the Origins. You can look forward to seeing several posts about these books from me sometime in the future.

Origin by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fiction

The fourth book in the Lux series is pretty grim. Katy’s life becomes really miserable, Daemon becomes even more reckless because of what’s going on with Katy, and a lot of people die. One death made me really happy, because in my opinion, it was well deserved. Then there was another death that was unexpected, but the person kind of had it coming, so I didn’t get torn up about it. Finally, there were several deaths that had me saying a sad “aw” out loud.

Besides all the upcoming misery that I feel I need to warn you about, there is much more going on that is on the enjoyable side to read. It feels like you are learning a fascinating piece of information or getting an answer to one of the many questions you may have had on almost every page. On top of all that, there are also exceptional romance scenes that are well written without being too graphic, perfect for younger readers but at the same time able to satisfy mature bookworms

At the conclusion of this book in the series I am left with no idea what to expect as a critical event occurs. I still had a lot of questions before this incident occurred, and because of what happened I now have even more. I am really tempted to pick up the next book right now, but I need to supplement my reading material with something educational.