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.

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.

Abby Baker is a research assistant for a local TV station. When she's on a riot scene to help cover a story, she becomes possessed by a fiend Lou (a not so bad guy). Lou is on the run from Uzkiel (bad guy), a fiend who wants a special spell that will give him an advantage in his fight with the demons (good guys). Lou had been acting as an informer for the demon Rule (good guy), and now Rule is searching for him since he went missing. Rule finds Lou in Abby's body, and immediately takes Abby into protective custody at the Vircolac Club. The club is owned by Graham Winters, the alpha of the werewolf pack. The pack helps to protect Abby, while Rule searches for Uzkiel. We see many of the characters we know from other books--Rafe, Tess, Missy, Graham--and they help in the fight against Uzkiel.

The story started a bit slow but then picked up around chapter five. Overall I enjoyed the storyline, the main character Rule and the supporting cast like Noah, Samantha, Missy, and Rafe. However, Abby is one of the worst lead female characters I've read recently. Not only is she not likable, the author is not consistent in the way she portrays the character. Abby starts out as a timid doormat of a character. Then she makes an idiotic decision--putting her life and others in danger. Afterwards she shows herself to be whiny and self centered. Then she's a complete bit*h, screaming at Rule for things that he didn't cause and can't control, which was inconsistent for how she was portrayed in the beginning. I liked Rule in the Faerie book, and was very disappointed to see him matched off with such a poor character. The romance didn't make any sense to me. I didn't see anything appealing in her character for him to care about. She's not even described as being physcially attractive, so I didn't get his attraction to her. Additionally, the dialogue was forced, awkward and frequently annoying.

Another thing was the copy of the book I read was FULL of typos and punctuation errors. It was extremely distracting. The worst ones were the constant mistakes in names--Bat for Bal, Rate for Rule, etc. At times I'd have to back up and reread a line trying to figure out who the author was talking about. I was reading a St Martins Press published version that was produced for Kindle. Very poor editing--someone didn't do their job. Also if the book had had a good line editor, the editor would have caught all the inconsistencies with Abby's character.

I've read most of the Others books and enjoyed several of them--mainly the later ones. If you've never read Christine Warren before, don't start with this book or book one. Instead, try One Bite with a Stranger, Wolf at the Door or Walk on the Wild Side. Those are some of the better ones in the series.