Author: Gwenda Bond
Genre/s and tags: romantic comedy, angel/demon, adventure, apocalypse
Publication date: October 5, 2021
Content Warnings: HP reference, parental abandonment (literally and emotionally)
Synopsis
A paranormal romantic comedy at the (possible) end of the world.
All Callie wanted was a quiet weekend with her best friend. She promised she could handle running her family’s escape room business while her mom is out of town. Instead a Satanic cult shows up, claiming that the prop spell book in one of the rooms is the real deal, and they need it to summon the right hand of the devil.
Naturally they take Callie and her friend, Mag, along with them. But when the summoning reveals a handsome demon in a leather jacket named Luke who offers to help Callie stop the cult from destroying the world, her night goes from weird to completely strange.
As the group tries to stay one step ahead of the cult, Callie finds herself drawn to the annoying (and annoyingly handsome) Luke. But what Callie doesn’t know is that Luke is none other than Luke Morningstar, Prince of Hell and son of the Devil himself. Callie never had time for love, and with the apocalypse coming closer, is there room for romance when all hell’s about to break loose?
Review
I wanted to like this book so much! 😩 A rom-com about the son of Lucifer and a human girl trying to prevent the end of the world is the sort of paranormal nonsense I am normally 100% into! But what started as an adventurous sort-of romance ultimately became something chaotic (not in a good way) that had me feeling let down.
To say the plot is disorganized only addresses part of the issue. Not Your Average Hot Guy is advertised as a comedy, fun plots and outrageous situations are pretty typical for the genre. The problem is there wasn’t enough humor or romance here to justify calling this a rom-com. The humor was cutesy bordering on juvenile, and the romance…well, we’ll get there.
The book was divided into 3 parts. Part 1 felt like the author had a pretty solid understanding of what story she wanted to tell. It wasn’t perfect, but it had a bit more of the advertised comedy and the beginnings of a romance.
However, in Part 2, the tone shifted completely from attempted romantic comedy to something darker. I know it took place in Hell, but again, as a rom-com I wasn’t expecting how depressing and cruel this entire section would be. Any light-heartedness pretty much stopped here and never made a full return.
It was around this time I started to feel like someone had taken a machete to the manuscript. Individual sentences were fine, but next to one another they felt awkward, like the text had been so heavily edited it didn’t fit with anything else around it. This made the remainder of the book through Part 3 really choppy.
The romance is also secondary to the plot which is a major reason why the story didn’t work. The book could have focused on one or the other and ultimately chose the thing the author didn’t seem to know what to do with.
These characters never had a plan or even a basic understanding of how their own world worked (Luke’s excuse is literally that his lessons in Hell were boring, he was literally too stupid to live).
Even in the final moments, they were stumbling along asking each other, “What do we do?” They seem to have saved the world in the same way they almost ended it: by accident.
Despite all of this Callie is a character I couldn’t help but like. Her early chapters are ultimately what sold me on this book. She’s a lost 20-something who has a great mind, and designs puzzles while working for her mom’s escape room business (speaking of which I was so angry we only got one Indiana Jones/Uncharted puzzle moment; it was literally her thing, I feel robbed). I loved her random tangents and references, and I loved that her family and Luke loved them too.
I liked Luke too, but more his potential than him as a character. His chapters felt inconsistent like he didn’t really know what he thought about things (other than ‘Callie pretty, Callie smart, she makes me happy’). The way he was written made him seem noncommittal in the extreme. For someone whose dad has literally said they will unmake them if they fail, Luke comes across as way too laissez-faire.
That’s not to say the author didn’t attempt to give him an emotional journey. There’s this brief discussion about him getting his wings, that he needs to “realize who he is” but by the end he still feels the same. When it finally happens…it just sort of happens. There’s no personal growth or realizations, no sudden protective urge or self-preservation instinct. It’s just convenient wing time!
And finally my last big gripe. The story was going so well, and then right in the middle the main character just had to make a Harry Potter reference (just because you see something that looks like an owl but is not an owl, in a place that is nothing like Hogwarts, doesn’t mean you need to start talking houses.) And calling out the author in your book doesn’t suddenly make it okay either.
The trans community has made it clear, the best way to be an ally regarding Rowling’s BS is to not give her a platform. That means no references and no gushing over houses. Good stories can be written without piggybacking off of her work.
This was so disappointing because I feel like the author was a decent ally up until this point. Nonbinary best friend Mag felt well-rounded and was an important player, I wanted to see even more of them. Honestly my favorite character!
This book started out strong. I was laughing, lead Callie was entertaining, I liked the storyline, but the longer it went on the more obvious the issues became until I realized I’d judged it a little too soon. I was invested enough to finish, but it was a struggle by the end.
This book wasn’t the demon/human comedy I was hoping it would be. Ultimately Not Your Average Hot Guy became Less Than Your Average Romance. The book with the cute lil cover has let me down.
Quote that summarizes my experience:
“The romantic mood has officially left the mausoleum.”
Cover: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Writing: ⭐⭐⭐ | Plot: ⭐⭐⭐ |
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐ | Spice: 🌶️
*This is a closed-door romance, but I’ve gotta say that paragraph right before the fade-to-black really worked for me 😘
Fictional Wanderings 