Demon Chick by Marilyn Kaye

Jessica Hunsucker’s life is going to Hell. Literally.

On her sixteenth birthday she discovers that her mother sold her to the devil in return for unprecedented power.This, conveniently happens after a makeover which makes Jessica, no pun intended, totally hot.

There are a lot of things I liked about Demon Chick. I loved how Hell was portrayed. Instead of fire and brimstone, it was just incredibly and endlessly boring. Things are kind of grey and beige, furniture mix-matched and worn, not much to do, only fast food to eat – which to a teenager might seem sort of great at first until you get sick of the permanent gut-rotty feeling fast food gives you. Early in her stay Jessica finds a book, hoping for some sort of escape she picks it up:

The back cover of the book hung limply, and I could guess why, even before my examination of the binding confirmed my suspicion. An entire section of pages had been torn out. The last section, of course. A mystery with no resolution. I could read it, get into it, and never know whodunit. Well, what did I expect? This was Hell.

Funny right? The entire book has this breezy tone which makes this more of a comedy than anything else. It is total light enjoyment reading. Even so, there are occasions when I would have preferred more of a serious look at things.

For instance, it gave me the major yucks that Jessica was given (yes given!!!) to a demon who was much older than she was. Now granted, he wasn’t such a bad guy, but the whole situation was sort of floated over and it gave me the creeps.

***spoiler alert***

Jessica’s mother is pure evil, bent on world domination, so I really wasn’t all that upset when she was assassinated. However, it kind of made my stomach flop when Jordan (the mastermind of the assassination and Jessica's temporary lover man) doesn’t experience any repercussions.

Jessica describes him as seeing the forest, but losing the trees (or something to that effect). He gets the big picture, cares about saving the earth and so forth, but isn't that interested in saving individuals. As is evidenced by his blantant manipulation of every female within arm's reach (not that Jessica seems to realize this – she’s much too busy adoring him regardless of everything).

I half wondered if Jordan hadn’t made his own deal with the devil. Now if the author had gone that route, I wouldn’t have been so bothered that one of our "heroes" was such a total sleaze. And he was. Sleazy. An assassinating sleaze. Maybe my problem is that I thought he should have had a comeuppance. There was no comeuppance! Jessica just thinks, "oh I'll always be second to saving the world, I'll just trot back on down to hell where Brad with make me his main priority. Toodles." And I found that unsatisfying.

***end of spoilers***

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Book Source: Tayshas Review Copy