I purchased a copy of Her Soul to Take by Harley Laroux.
Leon
I earned my reputation among magicians for a reason: one wrong move and you’re dead. Killer, they called me, and killing is what I’m best at. Except her. The one I was supposed to take, the one I should have killed – I didn’t. The cult that once controlled me wants her, and I’m not about to lose my new toy to them.
Rae
I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Hunting for ghosts is my passion, but summoning a demon was never part of the plan. Monsters are roaming the woods, and something ancient – something evil – is waking up and calling my name. I don’t know who I can trust, or how deep this darkness goes. All I know is my one shot at survival is the demon stalking me, and he doesn’t just want my body – he wants my soul.
I bought this before getting stuck in an airport with a significantly delayed flight. Which means I read most of it in one sitting. It served its purpose well on that front. It kept me amused. (Hope the people sitting to my left/right weren’t too shocked reading over my shoulder.)
I’ll fully admit the whole S&M kink isn’t one I particularly gravitate toward (I’m just a little too attuned to sex scenes that tread too close to gendered abuse in today’s climate.), and the ‘love’ here is expressed mostly through sex rather than any meaningful conversation or relationship building. But I did feel the author at least made the kink fit (Often, you can feel that the writer only included one or another kink because it’s on trend.), and the heroine was unabashedly into what she was into. So, there didn’t need to be the dreaded training scenes. (God, I’ve read so many training scenes. How different can any author really make them? I’m so entirely bored by them.) So, even if not a favorite, I felt the power dynamic and use of S&M worked here.
What I am into is a desperately obsessive, he-falls-first male lead. Leon is a demon, and the obsessive way he hyper-fixates on Rae feels like hedonistic, demonic behavior. It fits. It’s a weak basis for a romance, but it’s a strong base for why a historically murderous demon doesn’t murder one particular woman and protects her instead. A reader does just have to take it on romance-trope-faith that he is being legitimate and not simply enacting a deception in order to steal her soul, which, outside of romance-trope-faith, is the far more likely reality of the scenario presented in the story. Honestly, this little niggle always lurked in the back of my mind as I read. But I am as familiar with romance-trope-faith as any other romance reader. So, I persevered and overcame.
Rae (or Velma, as many other reviewers have called her, and they are right to do so) is likable enough. She’s not particularly smart about some things, but she’s also not TSTL either. Leon 
was the real shining star for me, but Rae gave him enough reflective light to do so.
I also really enjoyed the Lovecraftian horror aspect of the plot. The solution was fairly obvious, the human villains were a little cliched, and the fact that their demise happened off-page (obviously enacted by the characters and likily the plot of the next book), felt jarringly anti-climactice. Overall, however, I’ll be reading that next book and will happily seek out more of Laroux’s writing.
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