21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Right guy, wrong girl, May 19 2007
By Diane Raetz - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Demon You Know: A Novel of the Others (Mass Market Paperback)
I like Christine Warren's books. Wolf at the Door and She's No Faerie Princess were fun, fast and HOT. So I was looking forward to The Demon You Know. Unfortunately this book didn't come together as well.
First the good. The world is very well defined. The Others, after thousands of years of hiding, have been forced out into the open. Protests and riots occur on a near daily basis and normal human beings like the heroine Abby are trying to reconcile their long held beliefs with the new order of things. The support and reoccuring characters are excellent and alpha men abound for us girls to enjoy.
Rule-the hero of this piece is a good Alpha demon who is in NYC to find a fiend that has run away from Below. The Fiend has a spell which will allow the bad demons to bring perpetual darkness to the world. Abby stumbles into a riot and winds up possessed by the missing Fiend-Lou. The cast of characters, including Abby's very hunky brother, save the world.
The bad-Abby. Or more specifically how the author perceives Abby. Abby is, as she defines herself, the girl next door's younger plain sister. She's the girl you come home to. The one who has the comfy couch and the popcorn that's buttered just right. She's quiet, unassuming and comfortable to be around. (Linda Howard nails this character in Sarah's Child) But the author tries to make her Spunky-which is exactly what Abby isn't. There's a sex scene that occurs because Abby blows her top and yells at Rule and I found myself going WTF? Abby doesn't blow up. This Abby would cry or do yoga or something like that.
The chemistry between Abby and Rule is basically non existant because Christine Warren doesn't let Rule fall in love with what's great about Abby. She insists instead that Abby be something she's not, and so at the end of the book I'm busy writing a divorce scenerio in my head.
One other thing-Abby's possessed by a male demon who conviently disappears everytime the two characters want to have sex. I found myself feeling a little creeped out by the whole voyer scenerio.
Read this book for the secondary characters, the world building and the enjoyable prose. Just don't look for the romance of the century.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Worst heroine ever!, Feb 12 2010
By Sharon - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Demon You Know: A Novel of the Others (Mass Market Paperback)
I have read 2 of Warren's other books: Wolf at the Door and She's Not a Faerie Princess. I don't remember the first one that well, but I think I liked it. I liked She's Not a Faerie Princess a lot, so I was looking forward to this 3rd book in the series. But I could hardly get through it because the heroine, Abby, was the most immature, selfish, annoying person ever. SPOILERS AHEAD! Even though she knew she was possessed by a demon whom she could hear in her head, she persistently tried to get away from the only people who could help her because they dared to insist she had to stay safe in the club. This went on for almost the entire book, with her literally kicking and stomping her feet and acting like a totally spoiled 2 year old. Even after Tess showed her a vision of what would happen, she kept up her selfish ways. I could in no way understand how Rule, who is a great guy/demon, could be attracted to her. It did not make any sense.
In addition, the amount of "cute quipping" was so exaggerated throughout the entire book, no matter what was going on, as to seem forced and inappropriate. After awhile, you just wanted to say "enough already!"
And there were several errors that should have been caught by the editors that changed the meaning of the sentence. For example, on page 311, Abby and Lou are having a conversation in her head and she thinks to him "If fiends aren't supposed to be able to go out into the dark, how come I could?" (She is possessed by the fiend Lou.) It should have said just the opposite, that fiends could not go out into the LIGHT. This happens several other times also.
So all in all, despite the presence of many likable characters, especially Rule, I had to force my way through the book because I disliked Abby so much. She was like scraping fingernails along a chalkboard. That said, I will probably still read a couple of the Others books, after I carefully check the reviews for obnoxious heroines.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The demon made her do it, May 2 2007
By viktor_57 "viktor_57" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Demon You Know: A Novel of the Others (Mass Market Paperback)
I may be a man, and not just a man, but a preacher man, but even I like to step off the pulpit, loosen my cassock, pour myself some non-consecrated wine, and temporarily trade in one book about good, evil, lust and the supernatural for another, but set in modern-day New York.
The third in Christine Warren's Other series, "The Demon You Know" follows the nondescript and somewhat bland Abby Baker as she follows a hot lead that leads to an even hotter conflict between the Others, supernatural beings from the demon world with the power to save or destroy humanity. I, of course, am also out to save humanity, but not from demons. Unless you mean personal demons, but not a literal personal demon, like Lou, who possesses Abby to hide from Rule, another, powerful demon who is hunting him. I mean demons like addiction and moral weakness, not demons from supernatural realms who possess you and make you do crazy things that would normally be some kind of venial sin if they weren't so fun. Lou holds the key to humankind's destruction, and Rule must somehow stop him while keeping Abby, a mortal whom Rule has become attracted to, safe.
Abby begins the book as one kind of young woman, but as she becomes possessed by both a demon his lusty ways, turns into another kind of young woman. The kind of young woman I am usually warning about in life but rooting for in fiction. Better though, to live out ones desires to experience demon love in a book than to do so in real life, which I hear is frowned upon by my superiors.
You will not be frowning, however, after reading Christine Warren's latest provocative, witty and thrilling novel that will leave you wishing you could blame your own uninhibited, wild, and slightly risque behavior on, dare I say it, the demon you know.