After years of being imprisoned, used and abused by his father, Holden is finally settling down in Stillwater, a small New England town. He's been on the run for a long time, trying to cover his tracks by changing his name and moving from one place to another as far away from his home state as possible. 

A happy protective bubble of Stillwater seems like heaven. It has a few quirks, of course, but which town does not? Everyone knows everybody and people are mostly friendly. That is until Holden meets Daniel, a local vet (who is a veteran). An injured cat and the severity of the injury make Holden a catnapper when he refuses to surrender the poor kitty for euthanization and flees the clinic. 

Daniel knows what Holden is and confronts him shortly after catnapping. From that moment on the town secrets and the mysterious creatures start coming out of the woodwork full force. Every time you turn the page, there is a surprise. Every time you think you finally know who/what the person is, you are proven wrong. Things, people, situations turn and twist; there is humor, there are pockets of darkness and despair; there is an amazing diversity of characters (not going into details on the characters' subject, cause - spoilers! ;))

I could not get enough of the book and really wanted to give it five stars, but here is this:

- it ends smack in the middle of things. I can't even call it a cliffhanger, more like the author roughly separated the manuscript in two without much thought. 

- the story lost its momentum around 80%. Instead of fast paced it became stagnant with characters sitting around in one spot for weeks, waiting for the next full moon, reflecting, eating pizza and even (finally) having sex, since there is literally nothing else to do. But it looks like things are going to pick up with a vengeance in book two :D

Otherwise, an excellent read and pure pleasure :) Highly recommended

Seth is a healer, but with every person healed, he himself is getting closer to death. Knowing what healing in the long run entitles, he decides to break free before it's too late. "Not so fast, brother!" says handsome black man Zed with his James Earl Jones's voice, and makes Seth stay, rending him unable to leave the circus revival.

Abaddon is a soul collector. The Hell he lives in, tho I am sure hellishly horrible, sounds pretty amusing and sometimes funny. He is buried in paperwork and is under pressure to collect souls.

MCs meet, they fall in love, they suffer, they cry, they offer all kinds of sacrifices to save the other and, I don't believe this is much of a spoiler, they live to be together. All the usual works. 

Now, angels, hippy revivals, devils, soul collectors don't entice me in any way. I read this book for a challenge in which I needed a book with a devil, and only because it's Marie Sexton so I knew it would be as good as I could get. On the whole, it was 3 star-ish for me. Once again, it's me, not the book.

BUT! Just like Abaddon found a bright soul in Bible Belt, I found a bright couple of lines in this not-my-fav-trope book.

Tom Brady and Bill Belichick did if for me. I am bumping my rating up to 4. 'Cause PATS! 'Cause BRADY! =) This wasn't just bright, this was brilliant! :D And funny :)

Too many words in this one. I was skimming like no-ones business!

There will be more! =)

4.5 stars.
Despite an "it was dark and stormy night" opening which surprised a wtf moment out of me, yet amused Shax, the book is just as good as the previous ones.

A new character is introduced to motley crew of Brimstone: Maximilian (my favorite name!), a brave tiny bugger (quite literally) and a singer. He saves another stormy night the day and all of Brimstone crew with Heck's help. AND, I hope I am not mistaken here, becomes Leopold's partner and Shax's son-in-law. Tho for the life of me I can't figure out how things can work between a hedgehog and a millipede @.@

This installment is an opening to many more grand and not so grand, but, I am sure, just as humorous adventures. Do not miss it :D

I do love Megan Derr's books. Her "Kria" books are forever my favorites and so is "The Infinitum Government" Series.
This, however, is turning into pure horror: zombies, demons, flying spiders that are actually angels; there is barely enough interaction between gay protagonists to make it into m/m romance category.
If I knew differently going in, if maybe I read the tags and warnings and reviews, I would have been prepared better.

Keep in mind tho, that it's mostly me, not the book, because:
- Horror bores me to tears.
- Too many characters confuse me, I can never recall anyone beyond the 4-5 major-ish characters, MCs often included. Here we have 15 princes, plus a castle full of people, plus various demons-gods-angels-village people.
- Pain, pain and more pain. Don't get me wrong, I love it when an author makes their characters suffer. "Cethe" is Dah Book. But this was too much even for me. In the end I simply stopped caring about boys wounds, headaches, scrapes or soul wrenching ache for each other.

And so this is how it went:

ME: - Book, let me love you!
BOOK: - Stop talking. I am a busy book. I have all these characters to inflict pain upon.
ME: - But Book....
BOOK: - Bugger off or start helping!

So there we were, stuck together for a few days. And guess what? We made a fine team and successfully inflicted pain left and right.... and right and left... and everywhere in between.



PS I just made to 10% of book two. Chronologically, it should be book one. Logically, so far at least, it should be book one as well. I don't know, maybe it will make sense later.