The Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

Title: The Demon Lover
Author: Juliet Dark
Release Date: December 27th, 2011
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 416
Format: Electronic Copy
Acquired: ARC; Netgalley
Interest: Series
Age Group: Adult
Rating: 4-5 Stars

Since accepting a teaching position at remote Fairwick College in upstate New York, Callie McFay has experienced the same disturbingly erotic dream every night: A mist enters her bedroom, then takes the shape of a virile, seductive stranger who proceeds to ravish her in the most toe-curling, wholly satisfying ways possible. Perhaps these dreams are the result of writing her bestselling book, The Sex Lives of Demon Lovers. After all, Callie’s lifelong passion is the intersection of lurid fairy tales and Gothic literature—which is why she finds herself at Fairwick’s renowned folklore department, living in a once-stately Victorian house that, at first sight, seemed to call her name.

But Callie soon realizes that her dreams are alarmingly real. She has a demon lover—an incubus—and he will seduce her, pleasure her, and eventually suck the very life from her. Then Callie makes another startling discovery: He’s not the only mythical creature in Fairwick. As the tenured witches of the college and the resident fairies in the surrounding woods prepare to cast out the incubus, Callie must accomplish something infinitely more difficult—banishing this demon lover from her heart

This is one of those books where it might be difficult to say, "I loved it!" or "I hate it!" This book feels like it's trapped in some weird world between the two. On the one hand there were certain moments where I was really, really enjoying the story and I couldn't put it down, and then there were moments where I just didn't want to keep reading this book because the characters frustrated me. I am torn.

When Callie moves to Fairwick to teach at the local college, dreams of a incubus vising her in the night start to haunt her. As she starts to get settled into this new life she realizes that all those that live around her are not what they seem. For the most part, I really did enjoy this book. It was great to step way from YA and into the adult world. The character of Callie interested me a lot because she was fun to read and had a great personality, but at the same time she frustrated me. I know it's the authors intention to purposely keep the main character out of knowing too much, I still felt like she was figuring things out at the last minute. And the biggest realization of a mistake she made did come at the last minute or what I think was the last moment.

The story line was actually original. I really liked the way the author made such a diverse group of characters, and even expanded when it came to the fairy tale world. They had this life in them and it would be easy to pick out some of their secrets, some which Callie seems to be ignorant on.

This book does leave with more questions than answers but it is only the first in the series, and I hope that in the next book to come Callie will regain something that she lost, and for those that read the book will know what that thing is. I won't lie and say I wasn't mad at her for her choice, and mad at the others because all they could do was sit around and feel bad for what happened. That was something I didn't like in this book, the way people just sat around and thought how bad they felt, and if they didn't do that they instead went into another extreme. It's like these magic people need to live in this world of extremes.

But for a large part I did like this book and I cannot wait to see what happens next with Callie.