The Demon Lover by Juliet Dark

My ratings : 4 out of 5 stars.
When I received the copy of this book I was really excited as I loved the cover.To be honest I had requested this book due to its pretty cover and the title. I have had a soft spot for story lines like this and was quite intrigued had read a few reviews so far which had left me with mixed feelings.

Ok, so let’s start with the story line. Callie is offered a job in upstate NY, as a professor at Fairwick. It is not her ideal choice but for some reason she accepts it. She has had these dreams about a prince but as soon as she started living in the new town her dream prince appears more often in her dreams. Eventually she starts having dream sex with this incorpeal being time after time. Later she realises that she was doing things with an Incubus. Hence our story starts. This story has such a Gothic feeling to it. You can see the Gothic influences in the writing as you go on, which made it a refreshing, read for me. The setting was great. It was cold and dreary, perfect to snuggle in a sofa with a cup of tea. The descriptions were great which added to the gothic atmosphere.

The started out rather slow, at which point I was about to give up and then about a third through the book the story became really interesting. As it moved on I could not help but compare Callie’s helplessness to the gothic heroines she was reading about all the time. Callie’s naivety was a surprise for me as she was 26 and had seen a lot of the world but it was endearing. Apart from that I could not feel her. She was there and actually narrating the story but her personality did not come across. I wanted to know more about what she was feeling and what she was made off.

It had many interesting characters, but at times it was hard to keep track of them. I had to try and flip back a few times, which is not an easy task while reading on a Kindle. Even if I loved the story, the setting and the writing, I do a few complaints with it. It is being advertised as a Paranormal romance in some places, there wasn’t much romance in it. This perhaps could have because of Callie. She seemed boring sometimes and incapable of expressing her feelings.

Finally what really bothered me was the ending. The main story line ended at about 90% of the book but the rest seemed like a massive epilogue. Plus I hated the way it ended. I had come to like this character even more so than Callie herself. I was sad to see him go. I had even managed to guess the ‘mystery’ from miles away (doesn’t happen very often).

This book has been very hard to rate as it started off slowly and then it was hard to put down and then the ending was anticlimactic. Finally I decided to rate it on how much I enjoyed it, which would have given it 5 stars but the ending took off one big shining star. I can gain solace through the fact that this is going to be a three part series. So I am hoping that Juliet Dark manages to redeem herself with the later book by showing us more of Callie.

Loved the book and the settings but the plot itself could have been slightly better. I love the concept of a dream lover materialising which sounds totally 'toe-curlingly romantic' to me. I would be eagerly anticipating the rest of the books in this series.

ARC provided by NetGalley.