Both my BBH and I have had this book to read for a few weeks now. Since we both love UF we had picked it up on an Amazon special. The blurb really caught our eye. A story of demons, demons that were freely walking our world. Sounds crazy to say the least!
“They say I’m half demon, but I like to think of myself as half human, especially as the demons want me dead.”
Charlie Henderson is living a lie. Her real name is Muse and her attempt at a normal life is about to go up in smoke.
When a half-demon assassin walks into her life, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, Muse must return to the one man she hoped never to see again and ask for help. The Prince of Greed isn’t known for his charity. The price is high, but the cost could tear her apart.
Trapped between the malevolent intentions of a Prince of Hell, an assassin with ulterior motives, and her bloodthirsty demon-kin, Muse must embrace the lure of chaos at her core; the demon inside her, in order to survive.
When your ex is the Prince of Greed, you’d better be ready to raise hell.
This is the story of Charlie (Demon name Muse.) She was living a relatively normal human life until everything she held close was ripped away from her and she found herself fighting to stay alive. She is what is known as a half-blood, meaning she fits in nowhere. She doesn’t fit in in the human world and she definitely doesn’t fit in in the demon world since generally half-bloods are killed by their full-blooded demon counterparts. Charlie however had received a fate worse than death, she was ‘kept’ by a demon as a kind of a plaything. There are plenty of hints during this story at the horrors she had to withstand at the mercy of her ‘owner.’ I do wish that this past had been explored and detailed a little more, especially since she’d refer back to it as reasoning for her actions, or the actions of her ex. As it was it felt sometimes like this book started somewhere in the middle of her story.
As for the two leading men… Akil vs Stephen. Akil is Charlie’s ex… AKA Mammon, Prince of Greed. Whoa, he really packed a punch figuratively and literally. He was the epitome of power and violence. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him and he did surprise me a few times. To be honest, at the end of the book I still wasn’t quite sure what to make of him and I actually really like this fact. I feel like there’s a way to go before we start to untwist Akil and untwist his relationship with Charlie. As for Stephen, I actually feel like I am even more unsure of him and his motives than I was of Akil if that’s even possible. He is nothing but mysterious. I felt like every time I thought I was pinning him down he’d change direction again. And again. And again. The ending held quite the cliff-hanger for Stephen and I can’t wait to see what the second book holds for him.
This was a really solid start to a series that I think can only get better. There is a lot of storyline I want to find out more about, there’s a strange type of love triangle going on that definitely needs to be resolved and there’s so much more of these worlds I want to see (both human with demons masquerading as humans AND beyond the veil.) I think the story is hitting the right pace and I love where it seems to be heading. My only wish is that Charlie will begin to find herself more as the story evolves, Mostly at the moment Charlie’s character has me feeling a bit conflicted. I just wanted her to actually back herself up for once. But maybe that is yet to come? I’m sure with a bit of growth I’ll be completely in her corner.
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