One Corny Devil...

SATAN'S MIRROR by Roxanne Smolen (2010 L & L Dreamspell / 284 pp. / tp)
Emily Goodwin is the host of a popular TV show called "Do You Believe It?," where she debunks myths about monsters and urban legends. When we meet her, she's hot on the trail of an alleged "bat boy," and quickly discovers he's a real person with a deformity. After filing the story with her boss, she barely has time to get caught-up with her young daughter when she's sent on another assignment; it seems there's been several missing persons in the town of Saint Augustine, Florida, as well as reports of a haunted house that may be connected. Upon her investigation, Emily loses her camerman Dan when an interdimensional-portal opens at a locally famous abandoned house, sucking him into the abyss. When the police refuse to buy her story, she heads home shaken up and suspicious of a local fortune teller who may hold the secret to the missing persons.
But it seems someone--or something--has followed her. A demon manages to kidnap Emily's daughter right under her bed through a similar portal that took Dan. Desperate, Emily heads back to Florida to again confront Vanessa the fortune teller, and intends to go back to the house where she lost Dan...knowing she'll have to go to hell itself to find her daughter.
Although the publisher's website doesn't have this listed in the YA section, SATAN'S MIRROR reads as if it was written for a younger audience. The writing is standard, the dialogue quite corny (especially between Emily and her daughter), and for a story dealing with hell and the Devil himself, there's nothing scary here. Pre-teens might enjoy this as the finale features an adventurous, fantasy-like fight sequence, but adults seeking a serious occultic-horror story (as the title suggests) will most likely give up after a few chapters.
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Published on January 18, 2011 17:51
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