3 out of 4 stars
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The Devil has escaped from Hell and landed on Earth. Felicity Claire, the junior journalist at the New York Times is given the job of discovering why the Devil has come. Does this mean the end of the world? Felicity embarks on a journey of sexual awakening as she tries to maintain her slipping defences against the charming Lucifer. Meanwhile, a much larger threat has the possibility of killing hundreds of people in New York City and Felicity must put her own life in danger to save the human race.
Devilish by T.L. Barr is a romance-fantasy novel that focuses on the life of a young woman as she encounters the wildly more experienced Devil. Felicity is a well-written, strong female who refuses to bend to the will of the men she encounters. I personally loved the irony of Barr by naming her protagonist Felicity, which literally means ‘Intense happiness’ as it creates a nice juxtaposition with our view of the Devil. Felicity is young but has a strong drive that forces her to act, to attempt to better the situation and own up to her mistakes. Although readers aren’t introduced to many people in her life, Felicity is given a deep and thorough backstory that displays her deep love for her family, which I personally enjoyed.
Lucifer is also nicely characterised so that he rebels against societies notions of the Devil. However, his characterisation slips sometimes in an attempt to keep the story modern. As an eternal being, Barr is effective in creating his voice as an intelligent, ancient, almost all-knowing being, so-much-so that during the texting exchanges between Felicity and Lucifer, it seems out of character for him to be writing things like ‘B4’ instead of before. Similarly, I am over the idea that males need to punish females, especially by ‘spanking’ them. This isn’t to say that I’m against the idea of putting spanking into a novel. Yet must it always be because the female protagonist has done something the male protagonist doesn’t like, usually regarding another male, and therefore he must punish her? This is especially odd in terms of Lucifer and Felicity when the first half of the novel is spent subverting the traditional role of the Devil. Barr explores him a pacifist, emphasising that he can’t stand the idea of hurting people. And yet he spanks Felicity for doing nothing wrong, to the point where she was sobbing and then Barr adds in comments like ‘She was so broken. He had broken her.’ Obviously this Dom/Submissive, BDSM, semi-abusive style relationship has become popular in the last few years, along with the idea of the adult virgin that falls in love with the first man she sleeps with and never wants to be with anyone else. But the style, if not written well, falls flat to me which it does on occasion in this novel.
The novel needs another round of editing, as there were quite a few mistakes. Barr often writes long, awkward sentences that could use restructuring to polish and simply them. There is also a lot of repetition throughout the novel of certain ideas and phrases and occasionally the formatting changes randomly in places. These, along with punctuation and spelling mistakes, led me to be slightly frustrated throughout the novel which was often made worse by cliché and at times soppy writing, ‘That was when all Hell broke loose’.
That being said, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. The book is an enjoyable quick read that follows the rules of a typical romance novel with a bit of fantasy thrown in. The ending was happy and satisfactory with the storylines wrapping up within an action packed few chapters. Lovers of romance and fantasy alike will enjoy this novel as it caters to both styles. I personally found it a little too soap opera at times and cliché to read again, but I know that others will enjoy it immensely. With the number of editing issues I cannot rate this novel higher, and despite the occasional cringe-worthy moments, I found the novel entertaining and the characterisation interesting.
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Devilish
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