SASSY'S REVIEW
❖I first came across My Funny Demon Valentine while browsing Kindle Unlimited. When I read the synopsis, I thought it looked interesting and figured I’d give it a try. I had no idea I was about to become emotionally attached to an entire group of demons, much less an entire series about four particular ones.
One of the first things that caught my attention was Aurora’s take on demons, because she didn’t completely reinvent what they are just to make them easier to fall in love with. In this world, demons really are what we’ve always been told they are. They’re soulless creatures created for evil, without consciences or much of a moral gray area. That’s what they’re supposed to be, anyway. Ash, Bel, Meph, and Raum are the exceptions. Somehow, these four developed something demons were never meant to have: souls. And with those souls came emotions, consciences, and the ability to question their very existence. Don’t start polishing those halos for them just yet. They’re still demons, still incredibly dangerous, and their idea of morality doesn’t line up neatly with ours. But they’re no longer simply the soulless creatures Hell created them to be. They can choose to love, to care, and decide for themselves what kind of men they want to become.
That whole idea fascinated me, and it’s really what made me start caring about all four of them instead of only Ash. This is definitely Ash and Eva’s story, but Bel, Meph, and Raum are such a big part of his life that you get to know them right along with him. They bicker, insult each other, interfere in each other’s business, and generally behave like one extremely dysfunctional family, but underneath all of that is this fierce loyalty to one another. Considering these are creatures who were never supposed to be capable of caring about anyone in the first place, watching them behave so much like brothers made me want to know how each of them became the man he is.
Ash himself wasn’t quite what I expected from a demon named Asmodeus either. He’s been cursed so that women who might otherwise be attracted to him see someone undesirable and forgettable instead, and living with that has obviously affected him. There’s a loneliness and vulnerability underneath all that power that I wasn’t expecting when I first met him. Then Eva comes along, takes one look at him, and somehow sees what everyone else can’t. She sees him, she’s attracted to him, and poor Ash has spent so long expecting the exact opposite reaction that he really doesn’t know what to do with her at first.
What really sold me on the two of them, though, was the music. Eva is a musician, Ash loves music too, and it gives them this connection that has nothing to do with the curse or even their attraction to each other. Watching them play together and connect through something they both genuinely love made their relationship feel like more than two people who thought the other was hot and immediately started making questionable decisions. Don’t worry, they eventually make plenty of those too, but there was an actual emotional relationship developing underneath all that chemistry.
Eva has a backbone too, which we all know is going to earn her points with me. Finding out the guy she’s falling for is literally a demon understandably throws her for a loop, but she doesn’t suddenly stop thinking for herself. She asks questions, gets angry, pushes back, and has absolutely no interest in letting Ash—or anyone else—make all her decisions for her. At one point, she gets handcuffed to a staircase for her own protection and is far more interested in what she’s going to do to the people responsible than she is in thanking anybody for protecting her. I understood this woman immediately.
Ash, meanwhile, develops a pretty impressive protective streak once Eva matters to him. Hurting her becomes a spectacularly bad idea for anyone who would prefer to keep all their internal organs internal, so naturally I approved. Apparently adding literal demon to my touch-her-and-die weakness wasn’t going to be the thing that finally made me develop better judgment. The part I appreciated was that his protectiveness never required Eva to become helpless. She’ll let him protect her, but she’s also perfectly willing to tell him exactly where he can shove it when he crosses the line into deciding things for her.
There’s also a lot more happening here than just Ash and Eva falling in love. Ash, Bel, Meph, and Raum escaped Hell together, and Hell isn’t exactly willing to shrug and wish them well in their new lives. Their freedom comes with consequences, and Eva getting involved with Ash puts her directly in the middle of a supernatural world she didn’t even know existed. Aurora gradually introduced the curses, the use of Hellgates and demon blood, the gargoyles and angels, and the Grigori. Each new piece added to a much larger story without dumping so much information on me at once that I needed to take notes just to keep track of it all.
Eva also has some mysteries of her own. It becomes pretty obvious that there’s a reason she can see through Ash’s curse when other women can’t, but I’m not going to tell you what that reason is because that would spoil the fun. This is the part where I pull a Sam and tell you, why don’t you read it for yourself? You won’t be disappointed. What I will say is that what’s happening with Eva connects her to the larger supernatural world and gives the story a rather interesting twist that takes it beyond just the romance.
The humor was another huge reason this book worked so well for me because I laughed often. There’s genuine danger running underneath the story, and some pretty serious things are happening, but Aurora somehow manages to work humor into all of it without making the danger feel any less real. A lot of it comes from the characters themselves, especially Ash, Bel, Meph, and Raum and the way they interact with each other. Their bickering, insults, interference, and general demon-brother chaos had me laughing more times than I expected. Eva can certainly hold her own with them, and then there’s Thelonious, who has his own opinions of the situation. The humor never felt forced. It fit the characters and gave the story some breathing room between the romance, danger, and the heavier supernatural elements.
Ash and Eva’s relationship remains at the center while everything happening around them slowly builds into something bigger. With all of that going on, I never really had a chance to get bored. There’s danger and mystery, romance and spice, plenty of humor, and enough questions to keep me interested.
By the time I finished, I was happy with where Ash and Eva’s story had taken me, but I also had a problem: I needed to know what happened to Bel, Meph, and Raum. Aurora made me care about these four demons. She showed me just enough of the strange little family they’d created together that I wanted more from their world. More importantly, I needed to know the rest of them would get their HEAs too.
Stories can give us so much more than a few hours of entertainment. Sometimes they give me somewhere else to be for a while. Sometimes they make me laugh when I feel more like crying, and sometimes they give me a completely different kind of chaos to focus on instead of my own. Aurora gives me exactly that. When an author gives me something like that, one of the ways I like to thank them is simply by supporting them when I can. So I purchased the ebooks on Kindle and then went straight to Aurora’s website to get myself a signed paperback too. Because once a book earns trophy-shelf status around here, we truly commit.
My Funny Demon Valentine gets an easy 5/5 stars from me. I got a romance I genuinely cared about, characters who made me laugh, a strong FMC who didn’t suddenly forget how to stand up for herself when a powerful man entered the picture, a protective demon with questionable morals, a dysfunctional found family, danger, mystery, and a supernatural world that left me wanting to know a whole lot more.
For spice, I’m giving it 4/5 peppers. Ash and Eva definitely bring the heat, and their scenes are explicit, but the sex never became the entire story. Their physical relationship was just one part of everything developing between them, and there was more than enough happening outside the bedroom to keep me equally invested.
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Especially if you like supernatural romance and want demons who are still allowed to actually be demons. Aurora didn’t take away their darkness; she gave four of them souls and then let us see what happens when creatures created for evil suddenly have the ability to love, care, question their existence, and decide who they want to become. That was more than enough to send me straight into the rest of the Hell Bent series, and now I’ve apparently made it my personal mission to collect signed copies as Aurora puts them on her website and see every one of these demons get his HEA. Especially Bel!
Review By: SASSY
Owner • Creator • Queen of the Chaos
SassyReviews.com
Read, Reviewed, & BookDragon Approved… or Not.