C
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Theme: Angels/Demons, Fake Relationship
Archetype: Witch/Wizard
This guest review is from Brigid F. Brigid is a Queer fantasy and romance reader who believes fantasy and romance make the perfect book cocktail. She reviews at Grimdark Magazine and loves writing fantasy and romance recs for blogs and media sites. They love curses, faeries, cozy witches, and wicked characters.
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A Witch’s Guide to Fake-Dating A Demon is magical, demonically sexy, and at times very witty. It’s the ‘90s sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch if Sabrina dreamed about going to magical graduate school in between her kink for demons. It’s whimsical and pokes fun at fantasy but also packs some steam. It starts out as a fun romance, but ultimately gender essentialist language, alongside familial abuse patterns, really made it into a frustrating read for me as a nonbinary reader.
The story starts with Mariel accidentally magically blowing up a chicken. Mariel Sparks lives in Glimmer Falls, an American town of centaurs, witches, pixies, sirens, werewolves, and other magical species. Her whole life she’s been called a failure. The Sparks family, whose magical legacy goes back to medieval times when Gorvenal Spark was Europe’s preeminent court wizard, expect her to be a powerful witch as foretold by a prophecy.
The eccentricity and elitism of the Sparks remind me so much of Sabrina’s high-achieving, medievally old aunts. Vintage sitcom nerd that I am, a good 90s reference never fails to please me. And as Mariel Sparks fumbles every spell, including the exploding chicken, she feels like a failure. At one point, she even describes herself as a twenty-seven-year-old witch with the skills of a fifteen-year-old. This isn’t helped when her mother tells her at every turn how much she’s failed the family.
Every plant fantasy nerd will rejoice because Mariel also has a talent for plant magic, something her family doesn’t acknowledge as a proper magical skill, which is honestly such an egregious form of villainy.
This witchy girl is the Aquaman of plants. Her magical affinity for plants bonds them to her on an emotional level, allowing her to command plants to move or grow. My personal favorite thing about this is that they hug her when she’s sad. But plants can’t totally give Mariel what she wants in life. She wants to be enough for someone.
In an attempt to clean up the chicken guts, Mariel makes the worst spell fuckup of her life. She summons a demon. Completely by accident. Ozroth the Ruthless (yes really) pops into her kitchen introducing himself with extremely cheeky drama. For centuries, Oz has collected souls in exchange for a bargain. He even collected the soul of Al Capone. The demon plane needs powerful souls to prevent total darkness, and as a valued soul collector, Oz ensures his people’s survival. Mariel’s accidental summoning means that he’s stuck in Glimmer Falls until he and Mariel can reach an agreement.
To make the whole situation worse, Oz is in a bit of a rough patch. His reputation as a demon is already on shaky ground ever since he accidentally consumed a mortal soul, giving him the emotions of a human. His boss isn’t real happy about that. But Oz is determined to collect Mariel’s powerful soul to make things right. And of course, the more they spend time together, the more they learn how much they like each other.
The dialogue truly shines in this book. There’s so much that is quotable. It just tickles me that a polite demon named Ozroth the Ruthless tries to ruthlessly organize Mariel’s messy house and life: “For the small price of your soul, I’ll clean your whole house.” It just makes me want to summon a demon.
There’s a lot of sex positivity in this book. I liked Oz and Mariel’s upfront, very intentional, sex talk. Body parts are described explicitly. Oz and Mariel are very honest and descriptive about what they find sexy.
Alas I have to talk about the parts that didn’t work for me. I love romance. Full stop. But as a nonbinary person, I often don’t know what I’m going into because many romances seem written from a perspective that doesn’t consider that some readers might not be cis. And if I don’t start mentioning the issues that make me feel excluded, the genre will never change.
I want romance authors to be more careful about gender essentialism. There are a few lines that promote gendered assumptions about bodies.
Not long after orgasm, Oz thinks thinks “men” (cis men) should not have to do hard thinking because “his blood had pooled in his dick, not his brain.”
This language makes me feel like I’ve been excluded from a space that I otherwise love.
Overall, I did not find these moments sexy or funny. The language really pulled me out of the story and made me feel shut out. Again, I’m used to this. I’ve been used to it for most of my romance reader career. But it is very frustrating to be taken out of a story I’m loving, and I want it to stop happening.
The relationship between Mariel and her mother also feels like a misstep in tone. A Witch’s Guide to Fake-Dating A Demon is an incredibly funny book. But the book struggles with turning off the humorous tone during the more serious aspects of the novel.
Mariel’s feeling like a failure is caused by her mother, who calls her a failure to her face, in addition to saying Mariel is lazy and a slow learner. What’s worse is that her father supports his wife’s treatment of his daughter.
Abuse is a consistent emotional manipulation that impacts a person so much that they truly believe and adapt to whatever their abuser says to them. Diantha is not just a bad mother; she’s emotionally abusive. Understandably, Mariel struggles with how she sees herself. That, I sympathized with especially.
And while some portions of the story work to reveal the nuances in Mariel’s mental health, I did not appreciate the humorous tone in the more confrontational moments. As Mariel explains the harm her mother’s verbal abuse inflicted on her, Diantha is “per usual ignoring any criticism aimed her way.”
When their fight escalates, Diantha bursts into tears, sniffs, and then summons a silly magical creature, which causes some mayhem. It felt very awkward to laugh at Diantha when Mariel is trying to advocate for her mental health against manipulative parents who are harming her self-respect.
The humor undermines the severity and importance of Mariel standing up for herself by inviting the reader to laugh at what is really very sad and harmful.
I loved the world in this book. There are magical libraries full of old medieval tomes about wyverns, succubi, dragons, and demons. There are dating apps called Bumbelina for magical creatures and a reality TV show called America’s Next Top Witch. I’m especially fond of the grumpy werewolf who owns a plant shop called Zev’s Plant Emporium.
I want to be direct about what works about A Witch’s Guide to Fake-Dating A Demon in an honest way, just like I would with what didn’t work for me. At the beginning, I had a good time reading this. My enjoyment was just numbed toward the end. It’s a really fun book at times, but kinda messy, and you may want to proceed with caution.
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I read the ARC a while back. If this book was just Mariel and Ozrath the Ruthless going through her days bickering, flirting, exploring what makes her magic work, and his navigating his new human symptoms, sprinkled in with a bit more spice (Mariel goes down an internet rabbit hole to get some information on having accidentally summoned a Demon and found some interestingly sexy things that aren’t explored on the page) while he tried to bargain for her soul, it would have made the book a 4, maybe 5. Mariel and Ozrath were cute, their growth together was really sweet, and the way they supported one another through their issues is wonderful.
I referred to Diantha as the Kris Jenner of magic and I hated her friends too. Nothing drags a book down for me like great mains surrounded by shitty cast. That being said, if there were books written about the Siren Mariel works with and her boss at the plant shop, I’d give them a try if my library bought them.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Mariel’s besties literally got to outshine her at everything that wasn’t plants right up to being the one to kick the big bad out of town after Mariel did the hard work. They are both written as perfect to cast relief on just how bad Mariel is at spellcraft and just how much she needs to stand up for herself.
Her best friend, Calladia, is fit, perfect, and amazing, despite being the daughter of her mother’s worst enemy. In reality, Calladia is patronising and condescending, though it’s all dressed up as ‘empathy and coming from a good place.’ No matter what Mariel says about her experience with magic or her relationship with Ozrath, Calladia knows better, shutting her down and convincing her that she’s being lied to while Calladia herself lacks the full picture.
Her other friend, Themmie, reads like Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn rolled into one with wings, social media influence, and little impulse control. Despite knowing Mariel’s struggle with her family, Themmie invites herself to Sunday dinner without telling her (somehow she considers her friend’s family dinner a Community Event) to take notes for a college course, makes a joke comparing the family to hyenas, then gets mad at Mariel when the joke proves to be a little too close to the truth and Mariel doesn’t appreciate being humiliated in front of her new ‘boyfriend’ by her family and Themmie herself, who has penchant for putting things on social media without thinking. When Mariel attempts to apologise for her outburst, Themmie brings an already judgemental Calladia along to the meeting unprompted, making the situation harder. They were just sucky friends all around.
Thank you for the thoughtful review, Brigid. I’ve been burned lately by some of these M/F cozy paranormals, so I was hesitant to get this one from the library.
I have been finding myself more and more being taken out of work I am enjoying by gender essentialist language like that which you describe. I hereby solemnly swear to dock a star in any review for a book that relies on that sort of throwaway language.
And Jill and Brigid, thank you for letting us know about the family dynamics. At the risk of armchair psychology, there are sometimes where I read a story and I want to tell the AUTHORS that they deserve better.
Ugh. Thanks for calling out that kind of language. I’m cis and there are still a couple authors I stopped reading becasue whenever the ladies had pants feelings they were always “feeling that most feminine” blah blah blah. I don’t think about gender identity when I’m horny. My gender identity is not part of my sexuality. It’s like bringing in literature theory into a bang section – like cool thought but why now??