The Demon King and I by Candace Havens

Series: A Caruthers Sisters Novel, Book 1

Genre: Paranormal - Chick Lit

Copyright: 2008

Pages: 303

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Review: This was my first Candace Havens book and a good quick read. If this was her first book, then it is a very good effort.

Gillian is a Guardian who kills demons. Oldest of 4 sisters, her family basically keep earth safe from the creepy things in other dimensions. In addition to being earth's guardians, the entire family is high profile with Gillian herself a lawyer and gallery owner. Now there is a new demon king in charge who looks very human and very hot and they will need to combine forces to tackle the latest inter-dimensional problem.

This story had a lot of promise and I feel it could have been a lot better. The writer spent a lot of time on the world building in the first half and tried to show how the sisters maintain a balance between their public side as celebrities and the world saving side. However I really found the public part and discussion no which dress to chose and which colour matches really annoying. I guess chick lit paranormal isn't for me.

The romance part between Gillian and Arath wasn’t really developed - they wanted each other, but other than that, we weren't really shown how it suddenly led to love. The other characters didn’t really have a lot of depth although I really liked the relationship between the siblings.

A lot of the stuff in terms of loose ends were just told in the end and I would have liked to see it actually happen, since for me that was the more important part of the book. There were some instances where the wrong character name was used or some things the characters said were never discussed before and seemed to come out of left field.

However, as light fun reads go, this one made the grade. I'll probably read the next book to see if the series gets better and how the story progresses.