While I was reading Charlotte Stein’s Dealing with a Desperate Demon, I had a few conversations about the way unkindness is being rewarded socially and politically and how we combat that. And then I would dive back into Desperate Demon and feel wrapped in kindness again. This book is about being kind, being soft, and because it’s a Charlotte Stein romance, being very horny.
When Nancy was a child, she wrote stories and things happened. Her father hated the stories she wrote and the things she made happen so he committed her to an institution. She escaped from the institution and it burned down, but she doesn’t write stories anymore. Now she sells books and feels like she might be too much. One day, she finds Jack Jackson, the town’s large, angry looking grump who seems to hate her, in her bookstore and she is stunned when she realizes he was looking at a book called How to be the Ideal Human Boyfriend. She takes him the book to let him know it’s ok to look for help. Jack needs to figure out how to be a boyfriend, so Nancy offers to practice date him so that he’ll be confident enough to ask out the object of his affections. This is a bit of a problem, because Nancy is very horny for Jack, even when she tries not to be. As she helps him learn to be a Human Boyfriend, she discovers that Jack is actually very soft and sweet, he’s just trapped by familial expectations that he be hard and angry. Jack helps Nancy rediscover her powers and it’s super clear to everyone that Nancy is the woman Jack wants to woo.
Dealing with a Desperate Demon seems like it’s going to be a dating pact with miscommunication romp, but it’s actually a “Beauty and the Beast” reimagining with a helping of recovering from family trauma. In “Beauty” the Beast is cursed to the Beast form as punishment for his behavior, while here, Jack’s human form isn’t a punishment, but a challenge. Left to his own devices, Jack would be a soft, comfort loving cinnamon roll of a demon, but the family business is being scary and torturing the souls of bad humans. Nancy helps him shed the angry persona and embrace his sweetness and his kindness. At the same time, while he helps her recover her powers, he also demonstrates the care that she deserves.
There’s an unreal, almost fable quality to Dealing with a Desperate Demon, even beyond being a paranormal romance that draws inspiration from a fairy tale. Charlotte Stein has always struck me as both a kind human and a kind writer, and it’s a quality that her characters typically value. In this book, kindness feels like the foundation of the story. Fear, cruelty, and the need to survive have diminished Nancy and Jack (not his real name, but I don’t have a good spelling for it). It’s the kindness to each other and learning to accept kindness and turn that kindness on themselves that gets them to their happily ever after. I really enjoyed it.
I received this as an advance reader copy from St. Martin’s Griffen and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.