The subject matter alone should have been enough to dissuade me from taking this book, because I do not DO scary. But man, I love me a good bad boy story. And a demon? Talk about the ultimate bad boy. Plus, I have a particular fixation with angels (the other paranormal in PERSONAL DEMONS), so, I wasn’t NOT going to read it.

Still, I didn’t dive in. I waded, keeping my guard up. But before I knew it, I was sucked in anyway. The book simply devoured me. Quite easily. The writing, for one, is spectacular. And the voice? So sharp, beautifully genuine and captivating. Though there were times I wanted to slap Frannie upside the head for being so seventeen (OMG, that makes me feel old and stodgy); and more than once, I was itching to drop kick Luc for being so…devilish. BUT, that was part of what made these characters so very real. I reacted to them as if they were real teens I knew with strengths and flaws and attitude and desires…and oh my word, was there desire. Dripping, red hot passion. I half expected steam to rise up from my pages. The romance in this is so sizzling that even at the beginning, before the characters begin to change and grow, I was rooting for them. Honestly, I found myself wanting Frannie to end up with this…demon. It’s not that I wanted her to go to Hell. But I found myself wanting her to act on that chemistry between them and, um, “sin” with Luc just short of Hell-worthy. So, this sort of freaked me out. Because I’m not supposed to LIKE demons.

PERSONAL DEMONS was a bit scary—a goosebump-raising, stealth-creepy kind of scary, but not overly so. There were a lot of elements of suspense, but the demons weren’t really any scarier than most vampires or werewolves in YA (at least not on paper—movies? All bets are off). No, my main concern was that it was messing with my head—damn it, I was falling in love with Luc myself. And he’s a demon, people. A DEMON. Not. Cool. So hubs told me: “Just stop reading if it’s freaking you out.” To which I replied, “Are you CRAZY! It’s too good. And I have to know how it ends.”

And really, how often do you get that emotionally invested in a book, enough that even when it freaks you out, you want to keep reading? It’s remarkable. Indeed, I was completely taken by every single word. It’s just so layered conceptually and thematically. It’s funny and sexy, poignant and sad, scary and profound—an ultimate story of love and redemption. I won’t tell you how it ends, of course, but I’ll tell you that it’s a brilliant finale—a good vs. evil smackdown that will have you whipping through those final pages, reading like a speed demon.