The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers (Accidental Demon Slayer #2) by Angie Fox

Lizzie needs an instruction book - being a demon slayer is definitely not a learn-on-the-job profession.

But she has no time to study - her uncle has fallen into the clutches of a succubus in Las Vegas. But on arrival there’s far worse than just one man’s life at stake - the entire city is under threat, none of her friends can help and Dmitri, the powerful griffin she loves, is dangerously compromised

The first book in this series has enough plot points to intrigue me - while also having a lot more elements I didn’t enjoy quite so much. I was hoping the balance reset and we saw more of the fish-out-of-water Lizzie trying to establish very normal self in the wild and whacky world of elderly biker witches and demons and griffins.

And… we didn’t really get that?

I kept checking to see if I’d skipped a book because Lizzie has suddenly developed a weird level of self-reliance. A major side plot, perhaps the entire theme of this book, is Lizzie trying to drive everyone off and insisting she has to do all this alone… and… since when? By the time line of the book she’s been doing this for about 2 or 3 weeks? But now she’s making multiple comments on how she needs to do all this alone, she doesn’t need help and… this would work in say, book 5? But now it’s odd: where did this come from?

It doesn’t help that we don’t have any real revelations of this book - or any development of the world building that would justify this level of confidence. One of the comic relief elements of this book is the fact she’s given a provisional license. That she doesn’t know how to be a demon slayer. She comically fails the test. She has a huge, and good, epic rant about how her mother had all the training and experience and she was just winging it. She even starts writing a book - The Dangerous Book of Demon Slayers - to guide others because they’re so rare and there’s so little guidance. Her approach to other supernatural in this book is, naturally, confusion

So why the self-reliance? Why the confidence? When she was asked to levitate her response was literally “I didn’t know we could do that!!!”

What matches this confusing lack of character development is a rather equal lack of world development. The witches use magic - which basically means icky things to freak Lizzie out  - and I say again what a shame this is. These witches, all older people, were driven out of their home and away from their own traditions and had to hit the road, developing their own cobbled together magic as bikers, transients, people without herb gardens or supplies. I would loved to have seen more of magic, the witches and their cobbled together need to use floss and mouth wash and road kill etc. This is such an utterly fascinating unique concept while, ordinary-woman-who-throws-shit-at-demons-while-whining-and-has-a-cute-animal-companion is dullllll and done done done.

We had ghosts in this book. We had fae. We had people saying fae are discriminated against, we had clearly other supernaturals, a bureaucracy, licensing for practitioners, a fairy godfather and OH MY GODS SHE DOESN’T QUESTION ANY OF IT. It’s just like “hey, this exists” which is great - but we never go beyond that. Give me depth

Because without a compelling, developed main character, without a compelling, developed world we’re left with the plot which, I’m afraid, also doesn’t pull me in. Like the characterisation, it’s not actively awful, it’s just lacking anything to drag me in. They arrive in town to find and save Lizzie’s uncle and manage to find and lose him. And then we just have a whole waffly bit in the middle Dmitri is in trouble, Uncle Phil is in trouble and they don’t seem to actually do a whole lot? There’s just a lot of flabby waffle round the centre of this book, lots of fretting over Dmtri (but not fixing it), lots of worrying whether they can trust a demon hunter (but not doing anything to find an answer for this), lots of fretting over the growing number of succubuses…. And there’s a lot of “oh we have no time!!!” DO SOMETHING THEN!!!!

It’s not bad, I have to stress that, none of this is bad - but none of it is GOOD either and the stuff that could be good - the biker witches, the slayer who risks his humanity to save humanity, the time manipulating fae - just don’t get any development.

There’s also this ongoing angst because Lizzie has corrupted Dmitri’s “pure griffin blood” by bringing him back from the dead in the first book and infecting him with her essence. She’s super guilty about this and there’s a weird way she kind of forgets that it was to SAVE HIS LIFE not for funsies. And that ends up with the feeling that maybe he’d rather have died than be “corrupted” and how important “blood purity” is which… eeeehhhhhh

Speaking of - 2-3 weeks. Saying “I love you” at this stage is just kind of weird guys. I have no idea why you’re both THIS invested in your relationship.

The ending also annoyed me. After so much frustration waiting for something to happen that I was really excited that it finally did and there’s a big confrontation and it’s shiny and I’m happy and thrilled and ready - and she pulls the biggest random-power-arse-pull I’ve seen outside of an Anita Blake novel. Rando-ridiculously-over-powered-super-power-from-nowhere to the rescue!

Few things ruin a book series’s moments of dramatic tension than knowing the protagonist can pull god powers out of her arse to fit whatever situation

Also, honestly, some of these characters should have died. One in particular. Raise the stakes already!

Diversitywise it was lacking. We had some awesome older women in the biker witches but didn’t develop them. The big bad are succubuses (not even the odd incubus) so there’s all that evil sexy woman gender binary heterosexualness. We have a few bit part POC - but they are just that, bit parts. And calling the Asian instructor the “dragon lady” is a bit of racial coding no-one asked for

This book series is going to be one that torments me. It will torment me because it’s not awful enough for me to seethingly read it and then let loose in the review. Because it isn’t. It’s not BAD, it’s just blah. But nor is it boring enough for me to abandon completely and, worst of all, it has these amazing, awesome nuggets of potential awesome right there  and I think every book you could start excited because if just one of those nuggets pays off...

The Accidental Demonslayer (Accidental Demon Slayer #1) by Angie Fox

Lizzie was living a perfectly ordinary life when a demon appeared in her bathroom. And her dog started talking to her

Turns out she has inherited the legacy of the Demon Slayers and her guide to this new world is her long estranged grandmother, witch, biker and expert in the many uses of road kill.

She and a handesome shapeshifting griffin need to train her in this new world - especially since there’s a very powerful demon looking for her

There’s some elements of this book I really like, especially Lizzie’s origin. Lizzie was a nice, normal, school teacher. She has a nice, safe, mundane life and she’s dragged to her supernatural legacy by her grandma

And I love the grandma. Her grandma is part of a rather elderly coven who have managed to survive, alone of all the covens, in the face of a demon hunting them because they’re gloriously unconventional. They’re nomadic, bikers and their Earth Magic draws upon a whole lot of scavenging and road kill. And I kind of love this - I love this take on magic not being pretty or nice. I love how it’s by being so unorthodox that the biker granny witches have survived and I like that we have this really excellent collection of kick arse older women each doing their own thing and being decidedly indecorous about it. The coven rocks.

And I really like how Lizzie fits in with granny and this coven - i.e. not at all. She’s a nice conventional, a little boring, school teacher. She doesn’t ride motorbikes. She doesn’t fight demons. She doesn’t get dirty. She doesn’t eat road kill. And I like how her rejection of this kind of screws up Lizzie and the coven for a while with Lizzie making a major mistake because she IS human. I love how it sets up this conflict of Lizzie trying to adapt to this new life - while slowly learning to embrace it (I especially love the ending here).

There’s also a magical companion dog but meh, doesn’t mean a lot, manages not to be annoying or intriguing which is kind of weird for magical companion animals but does manage to make Lizzie look a bit of a dick for caring more about this dog than various people.

Anyone who has read my reviews knows the review is now going to take a negative turn as I talk about THE ROMANCE. I hate the romance in this story.

We have Dmitri, a Griffin (of course) who is… ambiguously secretive for no damn good reason for most of the book. I mean we get the answers right near the end for some pointless romance conflict but there’s no reason he couldn’t have been introduced with all of this. I mean he appears and Granny is all “we can’t trust him even though all he’s done is help us and we’d all be dead” but there’s never any reason why Granny doesn’t trust him or can’t explain a little about why she’s suspicious. Or even say he’s a Griffin! I mean, sort of relevant? Instead we have this convoluted mystery so Dmitri and Lizzie can fast forward themselves into a “romance” (if your only criteria for falling for someone is “he’s hot” is it even a romance? Because we know nothing else about him) and Lizzie can continually bounce between “zomg he’s so hot” and “Granny said not to trust him”. I mean this whole unnecessary mystery is there JUST so Lizzie can be conflicted about the relationship. And then when the inevitable happens and we find out that *GASP* Dmitri was looking for a Demon Slayer to take down the big bad for his own reasons and Lizzie is super offended by this because… reasons? It feels like another romance trope that is just shoe-horned in there because this is what romances are supposed to look like: mysterious hot guy, convoluted misunderstanding, etc etc conflict because conflict

The Haunted Heist (Southern Ghost Hunter Mysteries #3) by Angie Fox

Verity's life hasn't been the same since she accidentally trapped her gangster ghost buddy Frankie by dumping his ashes in her rose garden.  Verity seems to keep falling into trouble even though she's working really hard to get her personal business up and running and to figure out her relationship with Ellis.  Verity may love Sugarland, but Sugarland isn't exactly in love with her any longer thanks to the mother of her would be boyfriend Ellis.  Things look like they may finally be taking a turn for the better when Verity is invited to the bank to interview for a job. Unfortunately for Verity, the interview ends when the bank manger is found dead in the vault.  Verity was only trying to get a new client and instead she's now tasked with figuring out who murdered the bank manager with the help of Ellis and of course her faithful ghost friend Frankie. 

As you can tell form the cover, The Haunted Heist is paranormal chick lit. I''m a big believer in light fluffy reading during the summer.  It's the perfect book to take along on a picnic or to relax with at the beach. It is essential that you go into this book and this series with the understanding that it's simply meant to be a bit of entertainment to pass away a lazy afternoon.  

I couldn't help to giggle every time Frankie sought to get Verity to turn to a life of crime to end her money troubles. Even driving with Verity is enough for Frankie to suggest that she change her occupation to get away driver.  Their exchanges are the best in the book, even if at times Frankie becomes irritating when he interrupts Ellis and Verity when they are canoodling. Verity, Frankie and Ellis get into a lot of trouble together and it's hilarious. I particularly loved them entering a ghostly speakeasy and the night ending with a ghostly bar fight with ghostly bullets whizzing through the air. 

Despite the fact that The Haunted Heist is the literary equivalent of cotton candy, the one thing Angie Fox does really well is her interrogation of class. Verity has eighty dollars in her bank account and no job to speak of, so cash is constantly a problem for her.  Fox doesn't shy away from how difficult this makes life for her.  Fox goes into detail about how because of her poverty, Verity has an extremely limited wardrobe and must borrow clothing from her sister.  Even meals don't come easily and Verity's diet consists of cheap things like bananas and protein bars.  To hide her poverty, Verity even goes without a jacket because the only one she could afford in her size at the second hand shop is hideous.  Verity's life isn't about what she likes but what she can scrape together.  I will however say that I love the idea of Verity driving around Sugarland in 1978 avocado green Cadillac. 

The Skeleton in the Closet (Southern Ghost Hunter Mysteries, #2) by Angie Fox

The small southern town of Sugarland is filled with excited people.  A documentary is being filmed by the history channel about a civil war battle that occurred in the town. The movie is to be billed as residents of the town coming together to fight off the invading Yankees, in order to protect their town from destruction. This should be enough excitement for a small town but when a local librarian is murdered to cover up an old secret, Verity has no choice but to get involved. 

As you may have guessed from the book cover, The Skeleton in the Closet is paranormal chicklit.  It doesn't hide what it is or attempt to be anymore than that. If you go into expecting something light to while away a few hours with then you might just enjoy, Verity's latest adventure.  It's got a grumpy gangster ghost, a pet skunk, mixed in with a murder mystery.

Fox walks the line between exulting the antebellum south and calling it out for what was.  Fox makes it clear that "Tennessee was one of the most divided states in the nation, and our boys had gone off to fight on both sides".  In fact, Sugarland continues to be divided today based on whose family did what during the civil war.  The big elephant in the room however is slavery. Not once does Fox point out that the entire reason for the civil war was slavery, even if she has Verity (the protagonist) make it clear that she believes that the North was proven right in the end. Chicklit is meant to be light but if you're going to write a book about the antebellum south and how it effects the modern era, to do so without including characters of colour is beyond problematic. Where are the Black people in this story?   

Fox didn't shy away from detailing the horrors of war.  In detail, Fox wrote about the surgeon who long after his death continued to operate on long dead soldiers. The surgeon continues to amputate limbs and his surgical gown is covered in blood.  Even though both the northern soldiers and the confederate soldiers are dead, both sides continue dehumanise each other.  It's a small lesson in how war teaches people to see those belonging to the other side as less than human and or civilised. 

This is the second book in this series in which the victim is female.  I like that Verity is a strong protagonist who speaks her truth and stands up in the face of oppression and I like that she seems to have a lot of female support; however, having a woman as victim twice in a row has me raising my eyebrows.  Let's see if this trend continues.  

Southern Spirits (Southern Ghost Hunter Mysteries #1) by Angie Fox

Things aren't going well for Verity Long.  The entire town is gossiping about her for standing up her fiance at the alter and now she has to find a way to pay for the wedding thanks to the mother of her gilted ex fiance. Verity has been forced to sell virtually everything she owns and the bank is foreclosing on her house. Verity is hopeful that somehow she will find a way to save her home but she never could have imagined that the answer would lie with a long dead mobster she just accidentally trapped in her garden. 

Clearly Southern Spirits is paranormal chick lit, so don't even pick this up if that's not your thing.  It's exactly as advertised which for me, is the perfect way to spend a hot spring afternoon with a cold beer. It won't change your life, or reveal the mysteries of the universe but it's easy to relax with and a fun little journey.

The only way for Verity to earn enough money to save her home is to figure who is haunting Ellis's restaurant with help of her mobster friend ghost Frankie. Given that it's Ellis's brother that she walked away from and people are already talking, being seen around town with him is decidedly not a good idea in terms of redeeming her reputation. I helps a lot that despite his wealth, Ellis is the family's black sheep. I know that cops see a lot of weird things in their life, but it really is a leap for Ellis to decide that Verity is the one to deal with his ghost problems just based on her knowing where his dead uncle's lighter is. Fortunately, because this book is chit lit, I say just run with it. 

One of things that I really liked about this book was the discussion of class running through. Being in debt and without a job meant that Verity struggled to survive.  Her home had no electricity and she was forced to use a camp stove to heat up her ramen noodles.  Ramen basically became the staple of her diet and she was only able to eat other things when the people in her life treated her. Verity's conversation was regularly peppered with details of what could be found at the dollar store. Even having a fluffy towel after a bath was a luxury because she had no drier for her clothing.  Even with how far Verity had fallen, she realised that she was lucky enough not to have to squat in an abandoned home and that while she was surviving things could actually be worse.

Then we had Harry, who was actually homeless before Ellis managed to get him into social housing.  Harry isn't a very social person and seems to have a problem with alcohol at the very least. Based in the aforementioned, Verity was quite ready to assume that he was responsible to the damage of Ellis's property and even the murder of Ellis's uncle.  Ellis however never wavered in his conviction that Harry was innocent based on his gut instinct, even though the facts all reasonably pointed to Harry.  This of course is yet another case of suspending reality.  Ellis's faith in Harry served to cement the goodness of his character, even though in reality, someone like Harry is exactly who cops would suspect.  Cops have a way of going after the underclass and failing to see their humanity.  Their mandate may be to protect serve but that only applies to the 1% and their corporate masters.