Tag Archives: Kel Carpenter

Book Review: A Demon’s Guide to the Afterlife, by Kel Carpenter & Aurelia Jane

I picked up Dark Horse, the first book in Kel Carpenter and Aurelia Jane‘s A Demon’s Guide to the Afterlife series, as an Amazon freebie. I then bought the compilation so that I could read White Raven and Black Swan.

Don’t get me wrong, waking up to discover my ex-husband finally killed me wasn’t fun. Finding out I had to get a job and pay Afterlife taxes about ten minutes later?
Let’s just say, this wasn’t exactly the eternal reward I was hoping for. But beggars can’t be choosers, and being a demon sure as hell beats my last occupation.
I’m well on my way to retirement behind the pearly gates when the impossible happens. The Risk Witches have a vision.

A savage shifter that can’t control his wolf.
An ancient fae lord that’s forgotten what it means to feel.
A playboy vampire king with a secret.

Three alpha’s will inherit unspeakable power. Each of them scarred. Too broken to be tamed . . .
Upper Management sent their best to ‘fix’ them. Angels. Poltergeists. Nothing worked.

So now it’s my turn, whether I like it or not.
But unfortunately for me, failure is not an option with these guys.

Combined, they have enough power to end the world—and they will.
Unless I find a way to stop them first.

Breaking people is my job. But this time…my job might break me.

Review:

Meh, this was OK. I picked the first one up as an Amazon freebie and, on finishing it, bought the compilation in order to finish the series. The thing is, I bought the series because book one had potential, not necessarily because it was especially good. Unfortunately, the potential never developed.

The series isn’t bad; I never wanted to DNF it. But it never got good, either. I was never excited to pick it back up or missing it if I was away. It just coasts along at mediocre, always just barely good enough to keep you reading. But no better.

I liked that Fury had a backbone and a sense of justice. I liked a lot of the characters. However, from very early on, it was evident that Fury had a serious case of being too powerful and, therefore, too arrogant, and nothing provided a believable challenge for her. That only got worse as the series progressed, and she got progressively more powerful.

I also felt like all of the men were just caricatures. I never felt that I got to know them beyond the surface and the villain even less. The whole thing was also just unbelievably predictable.

All in all, as I said, this was an OK read. I don’t regret it. But I’m glad to be finished, too.

Other Reviews:

Tracy’s Book Reviews: A Demon’s Guide to the Afterlife

Review of Dark Horse by Kel Carpenter and Aurelia Jane

Book Review: Reject Me, by Kel Carpenter & Aurelia Jane

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In my other incarnation as Sadie of Sadie’s Spotlight, I received a free copy of Kel Carpenter and Aurelia Jane‘s Reject Me.

“Markus Del Reyes, I reject you.”
He left me no choice.

I refuse to spend the rest of my life with my childhood bully for a mate. I may be a cursed shifter, incapable of shifting—but I wasn’t desperate.

Not till the Alpha Supreme cast me out of the House of Fire and Fluorite for rejecting his son.

Now I’m packless.
Homeless.
No longer under the protection of my House.

Until the dark vampire king of Blood and Beryl turns his sights on me.

In return for protection from my former House, I have to join his.
But nothing ever comes for free.

He wants something from me, and it’s not my allegiance.

It’s the only way I can survive, but at what cost?

I’ve lost everything for doing what I know is right, but the greatest danger I ever faced was never losing my life … it was opening my cursed heart.

I don’t usually use star ratings on the blog. But sometimes they are helpful in making a point. If I were going to rate it, I would say that this barely made three stars for me. Let me emphasize the for me part because although I have objective complaints, they mostly didn’t work for me for subjective reasons. What I mean is that the complaints I have may not be deal breakers for other people because they aren’t uncommon.

Objectively, the book is way, way, way too long. The plot here did not need anywhere near 532 pages to tell!

Objectively, this book doesn’t know if it wants to be YA or NA. New adult books can be hard to predict going in. Get one on the older end, and it can feel mostly adult; get one on the younger end, and it basically feels like young adult fiction. The MFC here is 24 (the MMC is 300+), but the writing and plotting feel very YA. This would be fine, except the book also has explicit sex in it. And the combination of a YA plot and prose paired with explicit sex is jarring and feels inconsistent.

Objectively, the plot is really predictable and formulaic. This book feels like nothing more than recycled material. We have all seen every single aspect of this story before—the character types, the plot, the third-act miscommunication drama, the betrayer, and the villain all recycled. Here’s the thing about recycled material, though (which brings me back to my first point): we read such books because a lot of us like them. This one just didn’t manage to do it for me.