Rascal

Thank you to Netgalley and Victory Editing / Blue Shore Books for providing me with a free copy of this books in exchange for an honest review!

I have a lot of conflicting feelings over this book.

For the majority of this book, I had a pretty fun time! It's not a book you should take too seriously, and the book itself is quite self aware of how campy it is. I enjoyed the time spent on earth with Jay more than Hell; I think there were absolutely some funny world building elements, but I didn't connect with the world much since our only exposure to this world was through Rascal. None of the other characters in hell were really built up, like Zorolam, Paimon or the Devil, so there was quite a disconnect between how invested I felt in Rascal's story outside of earth.

I did really like the character of Jay, and the dialogue was more realistic than I expected. The author claimed to have drawn from his own experience, and it was very evident. The characters were still kind of shallow, but very much less so than can be said for hell, and there were some interesting characters like Jess, Enya, Augie and even Mouse to some extent, but it felt quite surface-level. i did actually like Jess' reveal towards the end. Jay was definitely pretty self-absorbed throughout the book, especially as she explains things, and Jess calling him out on that and taking him out was kind of satisfying.

My main gripe with this book was the ending. The story had been built up decently and I was interested in seeing how things would end up for jay, but the ending felt incredibly rushed, and Jay himself lost all agency in those last few chapters. There was definitely a disconnect between the final scene between Jay and Rascal and the epilogue, and it felt like wasted potential when the whole book had basically built up to Jay's corruption, changed its mind, changed its mind again, and then killed him off, almost killed him off again, made him despise Rascal, and then suddenly everything was fine between them? It really felt like the book was struggling to commit one way or another, and the final showdown felt disconnected from the rest of the book.

I would say overall I did enjoy myself despite this! As I said, it's a fun, campy ride, but it was just the ending that fell a little flat.