Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend by Linda Wisdom

Title: Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend
Author: Linda Wisdom
Format: book


I have to be honest. I abandoned this book without properly finishing it. I found it difficult to do so, despite my great dislike for doing that to a book. I like to finish reading things, even if they are disappointing. Unfortunately, I couldn't get myself to do that here.

While the premise of the book was interesting enough to begin with, I found the execution rather lacking. The idea of Maggie being an magical officer, working with other magic users or supernatural creatures was interesting. It was like looking at Men In Black, only without the aliens. However, that's about as far as the interest goes.

Dialogue between characters seemed very stunted and forced. I imagine that seeing the characters talk visually on a movie screen would have made up for the lack of description, but since this is a book, and I have only my imagination to work with, I could not work off so few cues that were given. I couldn't tell by dialogue alone if a character was particularly mad or happy or being sarcastic or sad.

While this can be excusable among minor characters, this should not be the case for the main characters. Unfortunately, the problem encompassed everyone. It became especially apparent when Maggie conversed with Declan.

Generally speaking, it is possible to see why a character is attracted to another. Though as a reader we might not agree with the attractiveness of said character, we can understand why they are liked. I could not see this in Declan. Declan seemed to lack proper depth and personality to make me believe Maggie was attracted to him. As a romance novel (or a book that has romance in it, anyway), it should be clear why someone likes someone else. Personality, looks, complexity. Declan lacked that. I couldn't tell where he stood, if he was supposed to be the mysterious type, the playful time, the bad boy, or the mistaken gentleman. Whatever Maggie saw in him, whatever any other female in the book saw in Declan, I did not see.

On another note, there are parts in the book that are a little peculiar. I applaud Wisdom for stretching out her hand in the creativity jar, but once again I find the execution to be somewhat lacking. I'm talking about the dream stalking, when Maggie enters Declan's dreams and they go do stuff and talk. The drop into those scenes were often very sudden, and I'm not sure of their importance.

Maybe I needed to continue reading to the end, to understand why she was able to do that, or why he called on her, but I could not see the significance of the matter. Why was it so important these scenes took place? Why couldn't their interaction be different, on a more normal plane? I don't know, but the whole idea threw me off.

It's unfortunate, but there were just too many issues I found with the story and characters that I could not get myself to continue with it. I did not feel overly compelled to pick the book back up and slug through more of its pages. I hope that Wisdom's other books aren't all like this. For now, I'll look elsewhere for more stimulating witch romance.

Overall: 2 out of 5