{Review}: Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

Title: Demon Lover (Fairwick Chronicles, #1)
Author: Juliet Dark Website
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher:  Random House Publishing Group  (Dec 26, 2011)
Paperback: 416 pages
ISBN:   9780345510082 
Source: NetGalley*
Available on: Amazon | Barnes&Noble | TheBookDepository

Description from GoodReads:

I gasped . . . or tried to. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t draw breath. . . . His lips, pearly wet, parted and he blew into my mouth. My lungs expanded beneath his weight. When I exhaled he sucked in my breath and his weight turned from cold marble into warm living flesh. Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly erotic dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of writing her bestselling book, The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. After all, Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she finds herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name.
But Callie soon realizes that her dreams are alarmingly real. She has a demon lover—an incubus—and he will seduce her, pleasure her, and eventually suck the very life from her. Then Callie makes another startling discovery: He’s not the only mythical creature in Fairwick. As the tenured witches of the college and the resident fairies in the surrounding woods prepare to cast out the incubus, Callie must accomplish something infinitely more difficult—banishing this demon lover from her heart.

My Review:
I have no idea why but when i started reading this book i thought it was a YA paranormal romance. Maybe it was the beautiful cover or me just totally ignoring the word erotic in the blurb. Either way it is not a young adult book but a romance novel with Gothic undertones. 


Demon lover began magically, I felt like I was reading one of my favorite Gothic novel. The mood, the amazing Honeysuckle house in the woods, the town and all its secrets, created the perfect environment for this story. The world Juliet Dark created captured your attention from the beginning.


My problem was with the characters and mostly just Callie. I understand that it might be difficult for a rational person to accept that a shadow man really does appear and make love to her but it just takes her too long to figure things out. Then when it comes to making decisions on how to act she does them too quickly with out too much thinking. I guess me being bothered by the action of one character means that the author did a good job at getting me engulfed in the story where I care about the outcome but I might have enjoyed it more if I was not yelling at her in mind constantly.


The ending was not my favorite and it got a bit annoying because of her actions but I will definitely give this series another chance and hopefully Callie learns from her mistakes and makes better decisions in the next book of this magical series.


The folklore of Fairwick was one of the elements that make this a great story. Yes, the whole incubus trying to suck the life out of Callie was interesting but there is more mystery surrounding the characters that I cannot wait to discover.


Demon Lover is a great read if you enjoy paranormal romance and references to other great books.


*Thanks Random House Publishing Group (Ballantine Books) and Netgalley for giving me the chance to read The Demon Lover prior to its release in exchange for an honest review.

{Review}: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Title: The Thirteenth Tale
Author: Diane Setterfield
Genre: Gothic Literature
Publisher:  Atria (September, 2006)
Hardcover: 406 pages
ISBN:9780743298025
Source: Library
Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4/5

Description from Amazon:

Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts."
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told.

My Review: 
I am a fan of Gothic stories such as those written by Daphne du Maurier, Robert Goddard and the Brontë sisters. If you share my love of creepy houses, strange families, secrets, ghosts, murder and madness, then this is the book for you. 

{Review} A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Title: A Reliable Wife
Author: Robert Goolrick
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Algonquin Books (April 2009)
                                  Hardcover: 291 pages
                                  ISBN: 9781565129771
                                  Source: Library Book
                                  Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4/5

Plot: 17/20
Setting: 17/20
Writing: 18/20
Characters: 19/20
Creativity: 15/20

Total: 86/100 = of 5 stars

Description from GoodReads:

"Abandoning her worldly life, traveling to a remote Wisconsin town in the dead of winter, trusting her future to a man she had never met - such was Catherine Land's new beginning. But there was an ending in sight as well, an ending that would redeem the treachery ahead, justify the sacrifice, and allow her to start over yet again. That was her plan." "For Ralph Truitt, the wealthy businessman who had advertised for "a reliable wife," this was also to be a new beginning. Years of solitude, denial, and remorse would be erased, and Catherine Land, whoever she might be, would be the vessel of his desires, the keeper of his secrets, the means to recover what was lost. That was his plan." Set just after the turn of the twentieth century, A Reliable Wife is the story of these two people, each plagued by a heart filled with anger and guilt, each with a destiny in mind. But neither anticipates what develops between them - the pent-up longings that Catherine discovers in this enigmatic man and the depth of her own emotional response; the joy Ralph experiences in giving Catherine the luxuries she has never known, his growing need for her, and a desire that he thought was long buried."

Plot: Good: A story of passion, murder, madness that is a joy to read. A psychological driven tale with predictable twist and turns but non the less entertaining.

Setting: 1907, wintry Wisconsin was a good setting for this story.

Writing: Good: I loved the Gothic feel of this novel. Bad: It had too much of an erotic undertone for my taste.

Characters: Good: Ralph is a perverted, lusty, lonely man and Catherine is a manipulative, and murderous woman. Yet, despite the fact that they are both liars, I couldn't help wanting them to be happy and together. Bad: I would have liked a little more elaboration on the crazy citizens of the town.

Creativity: Not the most original story but still a good read.

EXTRAS

Cover Art: I read the Hardcover, with the snowy trees cover and didn't like it. However, the paperback cover I saw later was amazing. I think that the faceless women in the red dress standing on the snow with a train in the background gives a wonderful preview of what the book is about.

Romance: It is not your average good girl meets prince charming, it's more like Wuthering Heights.

Overall: A good book for lovers of Gothic literature you just have to get over the author constantly thinking about sex.

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