Not Your Average Hot Guy

dnf, too hard to get through. Just not as exciting as I hoped...meh

I loved it! I'm also realising that I really love a treasure hunting type of story with side quests and everything. Also the fantasy/supernatural aspect of the story was interesting and the main couple made me think of Phoebe and Cole. I was also very interested in the escape room side of the story!

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Not Your Average Hot Guy is a delightfully silly romp of paranormal romance book. For a book about the possible end of the world, starring the son of the literal devil, it does not take itself seriously. If you go in knowing that, then you're going to have a helluva good time. (Did I make a Hell pun? I did. Sorry.) Callie's mom runs an escape room business, and Callie helps her set the rooms up, find the props, etc. Its in doing these particular jobs that she finds (and buys) a legitimate grimoire. Without spoiling anything too important, the grimoire ends up being used to summon a demon...only...Luke shows up instead.

Luke is Lucifier Morningstar's son, and he's not a very good demon. Or devil. Or uh...bad at all, actually. He's tempting, handsome, and has a sense of humor. Its really almost as if he doesn't belong in Hell at all. Callie is a legitimately good person, and because of that, is a giant cinnamon roll of a person. Her, and her friend, Mag, are enormous nerds, which I very much appreciated. (As someone who self-identifies as a nerd, it always makes me happy to see a book about a nerd that has very clearly been written by someone who is also nerdy. You can tell, I promise.) Sidenote — Mag is non-binary. It's brought up once, and then never made a big deal of the rest of the book. It is excellent representation. I loved it.

Luke and Callie are fantastic together. They pick on each other a little bit, but oh do they prop the other up when they really need support. It is a bit insta-love for my usual tastes, but they are way too cute for me to care too much about it one way or the other. My one real complaint, though, is that there are no real sex scenes! It's a fade-to-black book, my friends. Still enjoyable, but not quite what I want from a romance book. For that, I've docked one star, but the rest of the book is too much fun not to recommend.

In this book, Callie gets pulled into a cult's plot to start the apocalypse and has to team up with Luke, son of Lucifer to help foil their plot.

Overall rating: 3.8

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book, it was such a fun time and I will read the next one when it comes out.

This was a fun, irreverent, fast and funny read. It might give you Lucifer (TV show) vibes. It's light, a little nonsensical, and unbalanced at times, but if you go with the flow, you'll enjoy the ride.

It gets pretty biblical, for better or worse. And has a lot of action, I'd say to an extent that romance is more in the background. The romance is quite insta-love. Also, if you were hoping that the son of Lucifer would be the perfect morally gray character, then you might be disappointed. He is more of the But the romance was cute how they cared for each other.

I loved that escape rooms were such a big part of the book and that it worked perfectly with the adventures they went on.

The side characters were pretty good as well. Porsoth and Bosch were adorable. Would not say no to a lot more of them. I wish I liked the best friend and the brother more but they were a little random and I didn't love the storylines involving them. Though the best friend was nonbinary so yay for that!

The resolution was a bit lacking. The stakes were continuously raised, but then at some point we get towards the end of the book and we got a series of solutions that didn't match the stakes. They were simply resolved too easily in a way that made you think, why didn't they just do this to begin with.

Overall though, it was a fun book with a cool setting. Especially appropriate for October.

I was obv drawn to this because of the cult aspect, and I'm a fan of Gwenda Bond's YA books (and her former podcast about cults!) The book itself wasn't totally my cup of tea, like I understand that it is a romance novel and this is the point of it, but it was hard for me to get into the super hot demon falling in love at first sight with the random human escape room operator.

It also felt like the bureaucracy of Hell and the humor there owed a lot to Good Omens but in a way where I just like, wished I was re-reading Good Omens.

But I think readers who are more into paranormal romance in general, and who are less concerned with the worldbuilding details, will probably enjoy this more than I did.

Also it was nice to include a nonbinary best friend character although that character's side plot overall didn't...do a lot for me?