Synopsis (Goodreads):
Fledging guardian angel and yoga teacher Serena St. Clair dares enter Devil's Paradise nightclub on a mission—to retrieve the wayward Hollywood "It Boy" she's assigned to protect. But she's ambushed by the club's owner, arch demon Julian Ascher. The most powerful demonic entity in Los Angeles, Julian is handsome as sin, a master of temptation who loves nothing more than corrupting pleasure–seeking humans. He won't release the lost soul Serena is supposed to guard. Unless she accepts his dangerous wager…My Thoughts: This book has a lot of individual elements that I enjoy - Angels, Demons, Corruption, Redemption - but I'm going back and forth on whether or not I actually liked the book itself. On one hand, I always get a kick out of angels being tempted to fall, whether or not they actually do fall. On the other hand, I felt like I was never given the chance to climb inside either Julian or Serena's heads and experience the ups and downs with them. Yes, we were given a lot of information on them and they were clearly struggling to come to grips with loving one another but... I didn't cry with them when their world came crashing down.
After the disastrous way his human life ended, Julian vowed that no woman would get the better of him again. Yet this sexy–sweet angel, smelling of fresh ocean air and happiness, triggers centuries–old feelings. Now, their high–stakes game of seduction, where angels fall from grace and where demons fear to tread, will lead them either to an eternity in hell.or a deliciously hot heaven.
For one thing, Serena's biggest regret in life is that she never knew love. While I can appreciate that, it never made me feel like she had a huge obstacle to overcome. Okay, she never knew true romantic love. Now as an angel she loves everyone. Maybe not romantically, but she loves everyone. I just had a hard time empathizing with someone whose biggest hurdle in their afterlife is that they were never in love.
As for Julian, he went from an upstanding human to a debauched demon but he still retained a core of decency. Okay. I can accept that. While I felt more for Julian's plight than Serena's I was still left wondering how someone who was so inherently good as a man could fall so far and become an Archdemon in near-record time.
I actually felt more for the underling demons than for either of the main characters. Those demons had made one or two bad choices along the way and ended up in Hell's clutches. They were play things for the bigger demons and, in the end, they were trapped in their pitiful existences.
Now, I didn't hate the book. It was decent fun but it didn't leave me gasping for breath and weeping. Still, it was a nice escape from my regular non-demon infested life. So, you know, there's that.
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Where Demons Fear to Tread was provided for review by Harlequin through NetGalley.
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