An extremely fun ride
This was an extremely fun ride. A gory one too, but above all, it was exciting and delightfully entertaining. The content warnings had me laughing, which kinda gave a hint of how the rest of the book would go. And the narrator, Marie Bishop, does an outstanding job, right from the start.
Most of the story takes place in Rome, in 952 AD. Kalili is a demon doing demon things on Earth (such as perverting a future pope) when she hears that an angel has been sent to kill her. When the angel – Faith – catches up with her, things don’t go as planned. At all. First of all, Faith isn’t very good at killing, and on top of that, something happens between them, some connection neither expected (the reader did because a) it’s a romance and b) the prologue is set in New York in 2022). From then on, they embark on a journey to find out who wants Kalili dead and why, and learn that the situation is a lot more complicated than they’ve both been told.
A word of warning: there’s a lot of straight sex. It’s written with a lot of distance, clearly a means to an end, and definitely not as hot as the tiniest kiss between Faith and Kalili, who, unsurprisingly, are who I care about here. It makes complete sense with the story (demons use sex for all sorts of reasons and ways to manipulate humans, and most of the ones who need to be manipulated are men) and while it didn’t exactly bother me, I didn’t need so many details. That said, it’s the first book in a series, it serves as an introduction to the main couple and the author confirmed that book two is all about them – which means only sapphic sex.
Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll focus on everything I loved. I mentioned the narration already. For her first narration, Marie Bishop nailed the tone and pacing. The voices for each character are impeccable and easy to distinguish. The writing itself is light and effective, with a lot of humour, lively dialogue, snark and banter. Very amusing. And the MCs are perfect together, opposites who get closer and closer and closer, more similar as they go, their connection having surprising consequences on both of them. I love them both, Faith’s innocence and virtue the ideal counterpart to Kalili’s wit and recklessness.
The second book, Testing Faith, will be out on February 28th, and Marie Bishop will also narrate this one, though there’s no release date yet for the audiobook. In the meantime, have fun with this one. 4 stars.
