This RITA® Reader Challenge 2014 review was written by Carrie S. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Paranormal Romance category.

The summary:

Rebekah “Beck” Damian runs a demonoid bar where everyone’s welcome—even a reformed flesheater who’s strictly vegetarian, a musical ghost who’s looking for a piano bar, and a feline harbinger of doom named Wampus Kitty who’s scaring the customers. So when a big strapping demon-hunter walks into the bar, Beck knows it’s not the end of the world. She’ll treat him like any other customer.

If only she could. Conall Dalvahni is the toughest, meanest, sexiest demon-hunter Beck’s ever seen—and she’s finding it hard to hide her attraction. As far as Conall’s concerned, the feeling is mutual. But how can he trust a beautiful half-demon babe like Beck—when her demonic friends have the perfect weapon to destroy every hunter on earth?

And here is Carrie's review:

When Sarah asked if I wanted to review any RITA nominees, I pondered the list of nominees, and I pondered the crap-ass week I had just had, and I said, “Give me Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar.  It sounds terrible and therapeutic”.  Turns out it was not terrible, and it was very therapeutic!  Who knew!

I had a good feeling about this book right from the first pages, when a young man, Tommy, is made into a zombie  – a vegetarian zombie, who craves brains but settles for tofu.  It was clear that Tommy was going to be a side character, but he was sweet, smart, and relatable and I cared about him right away – just as I came to care about Hank, the cook who shifts into a bear, Junior, a ghost who wrangles a job playing piano at the bar before Beck remembers that the bar doesn’t have a piano, and Toby, Beck’s mentor.  I appreciated the fact that this book featured a cast of characters who are entertaining and who have strong personalities.  They go beyond caricatures and show some actual humanity – including the hairdresser who has only a few lines but won my heart by grimly declaring, at the sight of a woman’s ruined hair, “I’ve got to try.  I took an oath when I graduated cosmetology school”.  The most stereotyped characters are the redneck Skinner family and even they have some depth – not much, but some.  Verbena turns out to be full of surprises and I even had a soft spot for poor Earl once it was revealed that he wears Superman underwear. 

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is one funny book.  I’m still giggling over the scene in which Conall and Beck try to explain a series of events to a sheriff.  There’s tons of violent, scary, sad stuff in here but it all so insane that it’s hard to get too worked up about it.  I cared about Conall and Beck but I didn’t worry about them, because if ever a book was obviously going to end with two people happy together, it’s this one.  And meanwhile even the most harrowing events are discussed with this dry, black humor that was just the perfect balm to my dry, dark soul last week.  It was the perfect time to watch people die horribly and listen to other people make sarcastic comments about it.  This was definitely a read that benefited from timing!

The one thing I hated about Demon Hunting is that Conall and Beck are both, not too put too fine a point on it – morons.  They never do work out an understanding that Conall can’t order Beck around and Beck never does grasp the concept that she should call for back up instead of insisting that she doesn’t need some guy to save her.  Work as a team, people.  Instead Conall disregards everything Beck says and she disregards everything Conall says and she keeps demon spirits trapped in a glass bar at her honky tonk – who would wake up in the morning and say, “Hey!  I know!  I’ll keep something incredibly dangerous in something incredibly breakable in a place frequented by powerful, supernatural, drunk creatures?”

This book is the most recent installment in the Demon Hunting series.  I could tell that I had missed a lot but I also didn’t have a hard time jumping into the story.  I think certain elements involving side characters would have been much more engaging if I’d read the first books but I always knew what was going on. 

I don’t think that one hundred years from now people will be studying Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar as an example of Great Literature.  It’s messy, and the characters do ridiculous things constantly.  But this is an unpretentious book that offers a ridiculous, funny, sexy good time, and that’s what it delivers.  I had a ton of fun with it!

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