The Demon Lover
“The Demon Lover is a perfect book for reading in a big comfy chair with a roaring fire nearby, a soft, fuzzy blanket wrapped about your legs. Whether you like gothic romance, paranormal mystery, or a compelling read rooted in folklore, this novel is sure to please.”
If you found a man who satisfied you in almost every way imaginable—who watched movies you liked just so he could understand you better, who made sacrifices just to be who you wanted him to be—would you begrudge him being an incubus?
This is the kind of decision Callie McFay, the heroine of Juliet Dark’s novel The Demon Lover, has to make when she lands a job teaching at Fairwick College.
McFay was raised by archeologists interested in ancient Celtic customs who engendered in her a love of Gothic romance, folktales, and legends. She has transformed this girlish hobby into a career and has just released a very popular book called The Sex Lives of the Demon Lovers. Fairwick College hires her for their folklore department.
The day she arrives, she finds a large Victorian house that she impulsively buys. And then the dreams start. A man made of moonlight and shadow seduces her, night after scintillating night. And there is something familiar about him. He reminds her of the prince she used to dream about as a child.
She soon discovers that he’s not just a dream: He’s an incubus who has haunted this house for a long time. But more than that: Fairwick’s dean of students is a witch, the dean’s girlfriend is a Brownie, and the rest of the staff is filled with all sorts of paranormal creatures, such as vampires, the Queen of Faeries, and a succubus. But that’s not the biggest surprise: Callie herself is part faerie.
The Demon Lover in many ways follows the mold of a Gothic paranormal romance. You have your heroine living in a cavernous house. A dark, mysterious man becomes her lover. There is a young woman facing a family curse—caused by the misdoings of a father—plus a cast of supernatural creatures. But it goes beyond that. This is precisely the point at which author’s background in literary suspense shines through.
The Demon Lover is at its core both a romance and a mystery suspense story. There are red herrings and multiple mysteries. There are characters who have hidden agendas—not all of which are revealed by novel’s end. (You’ll have to read the sequel for those.) And Callie finds herself having to keep secrets she never could have anticipated.
By coming to Fairwick, New York, Callie has stumbled into a world that is more dangerous than it would appear on the surface. In the forest is the doorway to faerie world and, on occasion, immigrants both friendly and not are apt to come through. As in most romance novels, there are plenty of sex scenes in The Demon Lover, but they are not over the top and always drive the plot forward. The story has an ebb and flow that lets you relax between all the “edge of your seat” moments.
The Demon Lover is a perfect book for reading in a big comfy chair with a roaring fire nearby, a soft, fuzzy blanket wrapped about your legs. Whether you like gothic romance, paranormal mystery, or a compelling read rooted in folklore, this novel is sure to please.