Not Your Average Hot Guy

August 16, 2021
Bestselling YA author Bond (Dead Air) makes her adult debut with an entertaining paranormal rom-com and duology launch. Recent college grad Callie is left in charge of her family’s escape room business while her mother is away. But what was supposed to be a quiet weekend with her best friend, Mag, takes an unexpected turn when a Satanic cult steals an occult prop from one of the rooms, revealing it to be the real deal. Callie and Mag are unwittingly pulled into the cult’s plan to summon a demon—the handsome, leather-jacketed Luke Morningstar. Snarky Luke, the Prince of Hell and son of Lucifer himself, is on a trial run collecting souls for his father, but he’s instantly taken with fierce Callie. The cult, not content with mere demon-raising, works to start the apocalypse, and Luke and Callie must team up to stop them, giving rise to conflicted yet steadily mounting feelings. Luke and Callie’s romance is more sweet than sultry, leaving plenty of room for crossover appeal to Bond’s YA fans, though the tone can sometimes feel a bit young for adult readers. The paranormal elements are stronger than the love story, coupling familiar occult references with imaginative depictions of Hell. The result is fun, light, and funny. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary.

September 15, 2021
It's the end of the world as she knows it, but the Prince of Hell is fine. Callie, a recent college graduate living back at home with her mother, is admittedly "flailing a bit" at adulthood. With no idea what to do with her history degree, she's helping to run The Great Escape, the family's successful escape room business. But on Callie's first weekend taking the reins while her mom is away, all hell breaks loose--literally. A satanic cult headed by the blackhearted Solomon Elerion has been drawn to the occult-inspired escape room for a prop book of spells that turns out to be very real, hoping to summon a high-level demon. Their plan? To bargain for the location of The Holy Lance, which they will use to bring about the apocalypse. Luke Morningstar, Prince of Hell, is also finding adulthood harder than he imagined. He has yet to receive his wings and is under strict orders from his father to start harvesting souls for the underworld. When his supervisor, Lucifuge Rofocale, is summoned by Elerion, Luke goes in his stead with grand plans to accomplish this task and get his dad off his back. What he doesn't plan for is Callie, their immediate attraction, or how much he wants to help her save the world. The author successfully creates a tongue-in-cheek supernatural adventure held up by witty banter and a ragtag team of heroic underdogs, including Callie's nonbinary best friend, the artistic and stylish Mag. But the lackluster instalove romance between a stereotypically bookish heroine and a demon who's supposed to be hot as hellfire but lacks any sinister devilishness, pacing that's off, and ham-fisted pop-culture references drag the novel down. A funny but uneven take on love at the end of the world.

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September 15, 2021
Callie is expecting a laid-back evening with her best friend while running her mom's escape-room business for the weekend when a bizarre group of masked customers shows up. These cultists ignore the experience's conventions and, instead of looking for clues, start some kind of satanic ritual. Callie and Mag break in just in time to see them summon a demon. Instead, the drop-dead gorgeous spawn of Satan, Luke Morningstar, appears in an attempt to snag some souls to avoid major trouble with his father. The cultists should be an easy harvest, but things go seriously wrong, possibly triggering Armageddon. Callie and Luke undertake a quest to the ends of the earth and the depths of Hell seeking an artifact that could either save or destroy the world. Delightful mythological elements and laugh-out-loud humor make this a light-hearted, feel-good paranormal romcom. For fans of MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and Unwed (2004), Gini Koch's Touched by an Alien (2010), and Ann Aguirre's Witch Please (2021).

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