REVIEW: Dealing with a Desperate Demon by Charlotte Stein
Content Notes: emotional and physical abuse of a child by a parent
Dear Charlotte Stein,
I loved How to Help a Hungry Werewolf last year and guessed that bookshop owner, Nancy, would be the next heroine of the series. It was clear in the first book that Nancy had magical powers that had been suppressed but we didn’t really know why. As it happens, Nancy’s parents (and particularly her dad) decided their daughter had mental health problems and ended up committing her to a mental institution (there isn’t a lot of detail about this in the book fortunately). It’s unclear whether he did not believe or did not accept but in any event, he was very not keen on Nancy talking to animals (who talked back) or turning a toadstool into a chair. After she was released, she squashed her magic down until it was only a glimmer of memory. While Nancy’s parents are no longer in the picture, it’s not until Cassie comes back to town, that her magic begins to wake.
Nancy lives quietly above her shop with her pug, Popcorn, and has little by way of social life. The town members love her – she is very kind and lovable – but she’s not really close with anyone, feeling like she does not truly belong. She and Cassie are forming a friendship, as well as Marley from the newspaper. (I expect Marley will be our next heroine.)
Jack Jackson arrived in Hollow Brook about ten years earlier. He’s a large man, disheveled and and clumsy, lacking in the social graces. There was also an unfortunate incident early on when he ended up passed out in the town fountain – something he has struggled to live down ever since. He spends a lot of time scowling. Nancy is convinced he doesn’t like her. For some reason, he scowls even more when they are around each other.
When Nancy notices Jack in her shop, looking at self-help books on how to date, she feels sorry for him and offers her aid. One of the ways she does this, is by sharing her favourite romance novels with him. Jack does his homework with dedication and he’s just so sweet and earnest about it I couldn’t help but get all fluttery.
“All right, look, I did have a few follow-up things I wanted to ask about. But if what I’m asking sounds weird and uncomfortable to you, you gotta tell me so. You understand? No pretending this is fine if it isn’t. In fact, I’ll know if you pretend, and I’ll be real mad about it,” he said, with so much fierce earnestness and obvious desperation that she didn’t even think about it.
She just nodded. Crossed her heart and hoped to die.
Then watched with dawning horror as he fished a notepad out of his back pocket and started flicking through it, until he got to questions he had obviously been brewing all night. About sexy books. Sexy books that she had given him. Sexy books that she had given him that probably said a ton of things about her.
Jack’s reaction to romance novels and pretty much anything Nancy likes is all the wonderful things. And he’s extremely anti anything that harms or could harm Nancy. More flutters.
“Okay, good. Great. Now, on page two hundred and eleven of Lord of Her Pleasure,” he started, in a way that definitely suggested sex discussion was coming. Only somehow, he ended on something else entirely. Something she would never have guessed at. “He asks her father for her hand in marriage. Which I thought was maybe an archaic ritual, but then it happens in one of the modern-day ones. So my question is: What if she doesn’t want her hand to be given by her dad? What if her dad is an asshole, do you still ask him? How do you not punch him while you do it? Or murder him? If you murder him can you still ask? I mean, I know necromancy isn’t a real thing, obviously it’s not, ha ha. But you know, just as a for instance . . . like. What’s the situation here?”
Nancy is baffled but this reader was gleeful.
“Honestly, all of this feels not normal for a normal guy. Or, at least, not normal for most guys. I once went on a date with one who told me romance novels were rotting my brain and giving me unrealistic expectations of men,” she said, thinking only of the way that showed approval of him.
But he was frowning by the end of it.
“Okay, and this date. Do you have his address?”
“Yeah, I think somewhere.”
“Great, go get it, then.”
Jack asks strange questions like “how do human males do this” and “how do human males do that” which Nancy initially puts down to Jack’s general weirdness but eventually she recalls her own magic and comes to understand Jack is a demon. Which does rather explain a lot.
Jack explains, very carefully, that he is involved in a magical pact: similar to how it works in Beauty and the Beast. He needs to win the love of a particular woman before the end of the year. If he does not, he will be returned to hell. Jack doesn’t enjoy hell (he’s not one to enjoy hurting people for the sake of it). He is not keen to go back but also he’s desperately in love with this woman. He just doesn’t know how to woo her or even get her attention. Time is running out and he’s at his wit’s end. By the terms of the pact, he is not allowed to tell this woman who she is to him and due to his own belief that he is an evil loser, he does not believe it is even possible she could fall in love with him.
Of course, readers know straight away who the woman is. Nancy, having her own self-esteem issues and not understanding the terms of the pact, believes she is helping Jack to be equipped to court another woman. Even as she helps him and falls for him and even as they become physically intimate, she thinks it can be no more than a fling between them because he’s destined for another. Almost immediately Nancy starts to get to know Jack, she knows that any woman would be lucky to have him so she has no doubt that this woman, whoever she is, will fall in love with him.
It did take me rather too long to understand that Jack could not tell Nancy who the woman was. Things made a lot more sense once I understood that. In the prologue, Nancy is using her pen (her preferred form of doing magic) to write a story. She calls a prince to her, to be her soulmate and to love her. But she’s unable to finish the story after her father rips away her pen. And, after the mental institution, Nancy doesn’t really even remember that story. Jack’s dad is the devil and it seems he made some additions to the story which put constraints on Jack and Nancy. This wasn’t immediately apparent to me and so for a little while I was all “just tell her!” but after I understood about the devil’s intervention, I got it.
Nancy’s magic is somewhat atrophied and she needs to spend some time reacquainting herself with what she can do. As a child, she didn’t really think of it as magic at all. It was a just a thing, instinctive. But after years of doubts and suppression, Nancy now needs to learn magic in a new way. But, the devil and his evil minions are trying to stop Nancy by any means necessary so the risk to both love interests increases every day.
Jack is wonderfully protective. He basically exists to look after Nancy and make her happy. I never got the sense he was compelled to – at least not by something other than love – so there wasn’t any lack of consent. Jack thinks of Nancy as all things wonderful and amazing and that she even consents to spend anytime with him at all is a miracle to him.
“…Just don’t you ever say sorry to me, got it?”
…I say sorry to you.”
It takes considerable effort on Nancy’s part to convince him of his own worth, even though it is entirely obvious to her.
There are some delightfully absurd things in the story – a disapproving and opinionated truck which is not exactly a truck; a dog who talks with a British accent and is rather histrionic, among them – and lots of the kind of humour I expect from Ms Stein. The story is unique and filled with pop culture references from my own youth (which I hope will translate well for younger readers too) but it is also entirely a Charlotte Stein book. All the things I love about her other books are present here, wrapped up in clever (and very apt) references to Aha’s Take on Me and romcoms from the 1980s.
And her dreams were manifesting in a very strange, almost mundane sort of way. Like a TV drama about minor betrayals between loved ones. Spectacular, she thought, but also somehow so ordinary at the same time. A soap opera suddenly mixed with a fantasy series about flying whales.
All of which sounded bad, she knew.
I don’t suppose it’s entirely necessary to read How to Help a Hungry Werewolf before Dealing with a Desperate Demon (but why not?) but for those who have (or any other Charlotte Stein book) this one is a very good time indeed.
Grade: A-
Regards,
Kaetrin
I cannot believe it’s been a whole year since the first book came out. I still haven’t read that one!
@MaryK: Charlotte Stein has had 4 books out in the last 2 years I believe. And, lucky us, they’ve all been so much fun.