By Andrea Hagan
Published March 2022
314 Pages
Kitchen witch Aubry Brooks has a lot on her plate: keeping her family’s metaphysical shop in the black, getting over a recent breakup and dealing with the first anniversary of her best friend’s death. Accidental possession certainly wasn’t on her list of things to do.
But now she’s stuck with Damion, a half-incubus who is as clueless as she is as to how he wound up inside her and neither of them has any idea how to get him out. But living, literally, with a demon may not be all bad. He comes in handy during a kidnapping and considering that half-incubus bit, well, Aubry’s sex life has to potential to get a lot more interesting. When you add in helping her solve her best friend’s murder, Damion definitely has his uses. As long as she doesn’t make any binding deals with him, Aubry ought to come out of this possession unscathed. Right?
This was a really fun book. The voice is wonderful and although she’s in her mid-twenties, Aubry isn’t clueless. I love the witch community that she and her family are involved in and while kind of campy, this isn’t a shallow book. Instead, there’s lots of love, family, and friendship, plus sex. I’m a bit of a prude when it comes to my literature so even though its difficult to read a novel about a sex demon without, um, sex scenes, it wasn’t anything I felt the need to skim over (yes, I do that fairly often). Hence one reason I don’t read a lot of romances.
Which this wasn’t, despite the romance subplot. Nor would I go with fantasy. It’s kind of hard to classify so I’ll just stick with witchlit, or paranormal cozy mystery This was certainly one of the better paranormal cozies I’ve read in awhile – while not a particularly powerful witch, Aubry is comfortable in her abilities and the author, thankfully, doesn’t go anywhere near the trope of the young witch who was never taught how to use her powers.
Despite the fact that every male in the book seemed to be exceedingly handsome (except, perhaps, for the failed boyfriends), this is pretty much what I look for in a cozy mystery. Cute, funny, and teed up for the next in the series.
I rated this novel 3.5 stars. ⭐⭐⭐+
Thank you to BookSirens for providing the ARC of this book. I’ve left my review honestly and voluntarily.
Until next time, thank you for visiting.
Ann Dudzinski 