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Pages: 97
Goes well with: hot wings and the Jimmy Choo catalog
Demons and Stilettos Are a Girl’s Best Friend is one of those short books that would really do better as a full-length novel. At just 97 pages, there just isn’t enough time to really flesh out the characters or plot. If you are a quick reader you could conceivably read the whole thing during your lunch hour, but like a smooshed sandwich it leaves you unsatisfied.
Anne Jenkins is horseback riding when she finds herself in a dangerous situation. Her rented horse is spooked by something, and takes off at breakneck speed for a cliff. Desperate, Anne asks for help from “any supernatural being or deity that might be listening,” and a handsome man driving a motorcycle shows up out of nowhere, with the words “The Auditor” stenciled on the bike’s gas tank. He is Gregg Baker: IRS agent and demon.
After saving her from going over the cliff, Gregg explains that he now has to collect payment for services rendered. And that payment would be Anne’s soul. For someone who doesn’t have enough faith to pray to anyone deity by name, Anne certainly accepted this whole situation pretty easily. That was the biggest problem I had with this book: it deals heavily with the concepts of heaven and hell, good and evil, God vs. the Devil but is oddly agnostic. It would make more sense for Anne to find the whole “sell your soul to the Devil” situation a little suspect. In the end, there is simply no way for the reader to suspend their disbelief.
Anyway, Gregg has 30 days to collect on Anne’s soul, during which time he has to basically stay glued to her side. This means he moves in to the guest room over Anne’s grandmother’s garage.
Anne’s grandmother (whom she calls “Gramma Dottie” even to her face, which I found disingenuous. Surely a simple “Gramma” would suffice.) is a crotchety old coot. The author leads us to believe that Anne and her grandmother have a rocky relationship, and yet Anne lives with the old lady and is anguished at the thought of Gregg taking Dottie’s soul in place of hers. Another part of the contract involves three wishes, and I was frustrated with Anne—she was awfully slow on the uptake to figure out what to use the wishes on. And what good are three wishes if your soul is toast after a month, anyway? None of it made any sense. In the end Anne and Gregg wind up falling in love, and find a way to live happily ever after thanks to a grandmotherly sort of deus ex machine.
I simply was not satisfied by the characters or the plot—it all seemed rushed and only half-thought-out. Even the love scenes were brief; fairly hot to be sure, but let’s just say I wouldn’t expect a demon with supernatural powers to be a “minuteman.”
All in all, I found Demons and Stilettos Are a Girl’s Best Friend (on a totally petty note, I hated the title; it was too long and only barely connected to the story) to be like a lunch break cut short. You simply couldn’t enjoy it as much as you would have liked.
I really think it would have been much better had the author fleshed out the characters and plot more, perhaps expanding it to a full-length novel. But then, you wouldn’t be able to read it on your lunch hour, would you?
