Her Soul to Take

As I mentioned, I joined a new book club, but this one is virtual, via Facebook. I'm so silly that I agreed to read all three challenge books for November because I thought those were the "assigned" books, but they were more like bonus books, so now I have committed to reading six books. Not that six books is a lot for me in a month (I've already read over 100 this year so far), but committing to it feels different. Anyway, Her Soul to Take by Harley Laroux is the first one I read ~ it's from the challenge list ~ so I will review it here now before I forget everything prior to the discussion in December.

I didn't enjoy this book, but I gave it three stars because it was relatively well written, and I didn't think it was fair to take off stars just because I wasn't in the mood for nearly 500 pages of demon sex. I mean, I am not sure if I will ever be in the mood for that, so I would have avoided this book normally, except for the fact that I committed to read the November challenge list. Getting an early start too. Happy Halloween! I suppose a book about demons and witches and elder gods yada is appropriate reading for this week. Btw, in case you were wondering, demon sex is a lot like BDSM sex but with a forked tongue. 

The one thing that saves this book for me is that the heroine Raelyn has a cat named Cheesecake. What a great name! I kept worrying that one of the demons was going to hurt/eat him, but (spoiler!) Cheesecake ends up OK. Raelynn takes very good care of her kitty, which redeems her a little bit in my eyes, but she's still so unbearably stupid, like one of those gothic governesses who simply must explore the Forbidden Room in her white nightgown because she heard a noise. Even one of the other characters, not the brightest bulb herself, says hey Rae why are you gulping down a drink my brother made for you when clearly he is one of them? Duh.

The narration was in first person past tense, properly switching between Rae and the demon Leon with no POV mix-ups. I mention this only because so many books screw up the POV, which drives me nuts. Leon is a much more compelling character than Rae, as well as extremely funny, so I looked forward to his chapters, though most of the book focused on Rae.

The premise of the story is that 100 years ago near Seattle a bunch of miners became trapped and ate each other to survive. They all died except for three, and they survived because, along with cannibalism, they pledged themselves to the Deep One, a Cthulhu type sea monster god. Skip to present day, and some weirdo cult in the Pacific Northwest decides they will sacrifice three descendants of the three saved miners in order to awaken the Deep One to rule the world. It’s not clear why the leader of the cult wants to do this (one of his own children will be sacrificed) as he’s already rich and powerful, but whatever. Men, amirite? Since that’s not enough supernatural shenanigans for one book, there are also witches, demons, and random icky scary things.  

While there are a lot of frightening moments in HSTT, vis a vis nightmares, chases, ominous warnings and signs, etc., most of the “action” centers around Rae and Leon having wild sex and thinking about how great the wild sex was they just had. At the beginning, Rae is sad because her girlfriend Rachel broke up with her when she moved from Southern California to the mining town where she lived as a little kid (her parents have wisely skedaddled to Spain), but that’s the first and last time we hear about Rae’s attraction to women. As soon as she sees Leon (in his human form, obviously), she’s cured of lesbianism like Pussy Galore in Goldfinger when she meets James Bond. Leon also had a sexual relationship with a male demon, Zane, but his attraction to men is forgotten too, and Zane is now in love with a female witch. Maybe I am just old, but I didn’t think sexual prefs could be so effortlessly switched without a second thought.

The characteristics of the Deep One range from being omnipotent but asleep until a puny human awakens it with rituals to being able to kill every living creature unless you stab it with a certain kind of knife. OK sure. Who expects gods to make sense? Not me. The story is mostly about sex anyway. I did enjoy the parts about the grimoire, secret names and codes, and summoning a demon. My very favorite part was when Cheesecake wrecked a summoning circle by rolling around on the chalk outline. Cats, amirite?

Alrighty then. No time to waste, peeps… gotta get going on the next book club read, plus I still have all those Victoria Holts from the library. Yipes!