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Aug. 17th, 2025 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Lucky de Salle can see ghosts, but it’s daemons she should be worried about.
With no family and very few friends, Lucky’s psychic ability has always made her an outcast. The only person she can rely on is Kayla, the ghost girl who has been with her since she was born.
But Kayla is not all that she appears.
Hen again, neither is Lucky …
25-year-old Lucinda ‘Lucky’ de Salle can see the dead. In fact her best friend - Kayla - is a ghost, who has been with her since she was born. She lives alone in a small village in the Home Counties and makes a living writing books while trying to help those who are having problems with ghosts and need assistance.
Invited back to her former boarding school to deal with the ghosts of twin girls who were responsible for getting expelled, Lucky quickly realises that she is out of her depth. The school’s pupils have been playing with an ouija board but instead of the twin sisters, they have summoned a demon called Henri le Dent who smells of Parma Violets and has a message for Kayla that she is wanted back home.
Kayla clearly understands the message but refuses to discuss its meaning with Lucky and before she can really confront Kayla about it, Lucky is approached at home by former veterinary student Jamie Banks who wants her help after his experience of being caught in a terrorist bomb attack left him - like her - with the ability to see the dead. At the same time, she is courted by the wealthy Philip Conrad who wants to know more about her and her abilities.
With Henri le Dent becoming increasingly threatening, Lucky learns that Kayla has been keeping secrets and that both she and Lucky have a personal connection to the Underlands, where the demons come from. With no choice but to go there, Lucky discovers an almost medieval society where cruelty, treachery and malice are common place, women are very much second class citizens she has no idea exactly who she can trust …
Sue Tingey’s debut romantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) was sadly not my cup of tea. Hampered by a passive main character who repeatedly makes stupid decisions for the purposes of advancing the plot, an insipid potential love triangle (the main love interest being grotesquely manipulative) and a lazy, cod medieval demon world that offers little new. At best it was dull and at worst it really irritated me such that I will not be reading on.
I’m going to preface this review by saying that romantasy is not really my thing - the tropes just don’t work for me and I generally find the female characters to be one-dimensional and difficult to empathise with. In fact, had I known that this was a romantasy I don’t think I would have picked it up - I thought from the back cover blurb that it was going to be able the relationship between Lucky and Kayla and the secrets they each keep. Had there been more about their relationship I think I would have enjoyed this more than I did because in the early chapters, there are some interesting scenes showing how Lucky views their friendship while simultaneously letting the reader see that it is clearly not as close as Lucky believes. Unfortunately, the moment Kayla returns to the Underlands, Tingey loses interest in that relationship completely - they have very few scenes and what we get are pointless arguments that don’t advance anything.
I got very bored of Lucky being behind the curve all the time. Even when she realises that she’s been lied to by both Kayla and Jamie, she doesn’t push for answers and is limited to helpless complaints while everyone else continues to do as they want. There’s just no sense of Lucky taking the initiative or even trying to take charge of her own destiny and I got very bored with the way she refuses to listen to advice and then creates problems for herself and for others. Tingey is clearly building a love triangle between Lucky, Jamie and another of her demon bodyguards, Jinx. The fact that Jamie has white wings and Jinx is a literal red skinned devil with a tail was a bit too on the nose for me but I also found Jamie’s manipulations to be quite creepy. There is a really quite chilling scene where the reader realises that Jamie has basically memory wiped Lucky after she overhears an argument between him and Kayla but Lucky has no idea about it and that made the later scenes in the book where she is Cleary attracted to him really quite icky.
The world building in the book didn’t work for me just because there’s nothing really new here. The Underworld is a cod Medieval setting with taverns, demons and dragons and everyone is subservient to demonic nobles, led by the capricious and paranoid Lord Baltheza who just happens to be Kayla’s father. The main plot revolves around the fact that whoever marries Kayla will become heir apparent to Baltheza, which again, gave me the ick, but what particularly annoyed me is that in the final quarter Tingey decides to have Baltheza put Kayla and Lucky on trial for treason for reasons that really don’t make any sense especially given the previous scenes between Baltheza, Kayla and Lucky.
The characterisation in the book isn’t great. Mr Shenanigans and Mr Kerfuffle were largely interchangeable, Pyrites the drakon is a cute mix of dog, cat and horse. Baltheza is one-dimensional, as is his executioner Amaliel and wannabe heir, Lord Daltas. There are some interesting ideas - Lucky’s own demonic heritage and the fact that she is able to see the demonic dead is one with potential (sadly completely unexplored in this book) - but this book is basically a lot of set up for a destination that I’m not interested in visiting and as such I will not be reading on.
The Verdict:
Sue Tingey’s debut romantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) was sadly not my cup of tea. Hampered by a passive main character who repeatedly makes stupid decisions for the purposes of advancing the plot, an insipid potential love triangle (the main love interest being grotesquely manipulative) and a lazy, cod medieval demon world that offers little new. At best it was dull and at worst it really irritated me such that I will not be reading on.
With no family and very few friends, Lucky’s psychic ability has always made her an outcast. The only person she can rely on is Kayla, the ghost girl who has been with her since she was born.
But Kayla is not all that she appears.
Hen again, neither is Lucky …
25-year-old Lucinda ‘Lucky’ de Salle can see the dead. In fact her best friend - Kayla - is a ghost, who has been with her since she was born. She lives alone in a small village in the Home Counties and makes a living writing books while trying to help those who are having problems with ghosts and need assistance.
Invited back to her former boarding school to deal with the ghosts of twin girls who were responsible for getting expelled, Lucky quickly realises that she is out of her depth. The school’s pupils have been playing with an ouija board but instead of the twin sisters, they have summoned a demon called Henri le Dent who smells of Parma Violets and has a message for Kayla that she is wanted back home.
Kayla clearly understands the message but refuses to discuss its meaning with Lucky and before she can really confront Kayla about it, Lucky is approached at home by former veterinary student Jamie Banks who wants her help after his experience of being caught in a terrorist bomb attack left him - like her - with the ability to see the dead. At the same time, she is courted by the wealthy Philip Conrad who wants to know more about her and her abilities.
With Henri le Dent becoming increasingly threatening, Lucky learns that Kayla has been keeping secrets and that both she and Lucky have a personal connection to the Underlands, where the demons come from. With no choice but to go there, Lucky discovers an almost medieval society where cruelty, treachery and malice are common place, women are very much second class citizens she has no idea exactly who she can trust …
Sue Tingey’s debut romantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) was sadly not my cup of tea. Hampered by a passive main character who repeatedly makes stupid decisions for the purposes of advancing the plot, an insipid potential love triangle (the main love interest being grotesquely manipulative) and a lazy, cod medieval demon world that offers little new. At best it was dull and at worst it really irritated me such that I will not be reading on.
I’m going to preface this review by saying that romantasy is not really my thing - the tropes just don’t work for me and I generally find the female characters to be one-dimensional and difficult to empathise with. In fact, had I known that this was a romantasy I don’t think I would have picked it up - I thought from the back cover blurb that it was going to be able the relationship between Lucky and Kayla and the secrets they each keep. Had there been more about their relationship I think I would have enjoyed this more than I did because in the early chapters, there are some interesting scenes showing how Lucky views their friendship while simultaneously letting the reader see that it is clearly not as close as Lucky believes. Unfortunately, the moment Kayla returns to the Underlands, Tingey loses interest in that relationship completely - they have very few scenes and what we get are pointless arguments that don’t advance anything.
I got very bored of Lucky being behind the curve all the time. Even when she realises that she’s been lied to by both Kayla and Jamie, she doesn’t push for answers and is limited to helpless complaints while everyone else continues to do as they want. There’s just no sense of Lucky taking the initiative or even trying to take charge of her own destiny and I got very bored with the way she refuses to listen to advice and then creates problems for herself and for others. Tingey is clearly building a love triangle between Lucky, Jamie and another of her demon bodyguards, Jinx. The fact that Jamie has white wings and Jinx is a literal red skinned devil with a tail was a bit too on the nose for me but I also found Jamie’s manipulations to be quite creepy. There is a really quite chilling scene where the reader realises that Jamie has basically memory wiped Lucky after she overhears an argument between him and Kayla but Lucky has no idea about it and that made the later scenes in the book where she is Cleary attracted to him really quite icky.
The world building in the book didn’t work for me just because there’s nothing really new here. The Underworld is a cod Medieval setting with taverns, demons and dragons and everyone is subservient to demonic nobles, led by the capricious and paranoid Lord Baltheza who just happens to be Kayla’s father. The main plot revolves around the fact that whoever marries Kayla will become heir apparent to Baltheza, which again, gave me the ick, but what particularly annoyed me is that in the final quarter Tingey decides to have Baltheza put Kayla and Lucky on trial for treason for reasons that really don’t make any sense especially given the previous scenes between Baltheza, Kayla and Lucky.
The characterisation in the book isn’t great. Mr Shenanigans and Mr Kerfuffle were largely interchangeable, Pyrites the drakon is a cute mix of dog, cat and horse. Baltheza is one-dimensional, as is his executioner Amaliel and wannabe heir, Lord Daltas. There are some interesting ideas - Lucky’s own demonic heritage and the fact that she is able to see the demonic dead is one with potential (sadly completely unexplored in this book) - but this book is basically a lot of set up for a destination that I’m not interested in visiting and as such I will not be reading on.
The Verdict:
Sue Tingey’s debut romantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) was sadly not my cup of tea. Hampered by a passive main character who repeatedly makes stupid decisions for the purposes of advancing the plot, an insipid potential love triangle (the main love interest being grotesquely manipulative) and a lazy, cod medieval demon world that offers little new. At best it was dull and at worst it really irritated me such that I will not be reading on.
