Sarah Hawley lives in the Pacific Northwest, where her hobbies include rambling through the woods and appreciating fictional villains. She has an MA in archaeology and has excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, or cuddling her two cats. You can find more of my reviews of her work here.
Calladia Cunnington knows she's rough around the edges, despite being the heir to one of small-town Glimmer Falls' founding witch families. While her gym obsession is a great outlet for her anxieties and anger, her hot temper still gets the best of her and manifests in bar brawls. When Calladia saves someone from a demon attack one night, she's happy to put her magic and rage to good use . . . until she realizes the man she saved is none other than Astaroth, the ruthless demon who orchestrated a soul bargain on her best friend. Astaroth is a legendary soul bargainer and one of the nine members of the demon high council—except he can't remember any of this. Suffering from amnesia after being banished to the mortal plane, Astaroth doesn't know why a demon named Moloch is after him, nor why the muscular, angry, hot-in-a-terrifying-way witch who saved him hates him so much. Unable to leave anyone in such a vulnerable state—even the most despicable demon—Calladia grudgingly decides to help him. (Besides, punching an amnesiac would be in poor taste.) The two set out on an uneasy road trip to find the witch who might be able to restore Astaroth's memory so they can learn how to defeat Moloch. Calladia vows that once Astaroth is cured, she'll kick his ass, but the more time she spends with the snarky yet utterly charming demon, she more she realizes she likes this new, improved Astaroth . . . and maybe she doesn't want him to recover his memories, after all.
What I really loved about A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch are the complicated main characters. You could even go as far to say that Calladia and Astaroth are blatantly unlikeable at first. I like how both of them have such strong personalities, and have to learn to be proud of who they are over the course of the novel. For Calladia, that means getting rid of the people who tear her down, and surround herself with the people who build her up. For Astaroth, it means accepting who he is and his past (once his memories come back), and learning how to build his future the way he wants with everything he's learned. I really appreciated how they were both key players in the other's journey—I felt that their character arcs dovetailed really nicely.
Because of that, I believed in their chemistry, and the enemies to lovers narrative they had at the start. While it's definitely quick (because Calladia literally hated Astaroth not 24 hours before the action of this book), their chemistry built naturally over the course of the time they spent together, and I rooted for them to get together by the end. While I digress that it would have been more interesting had Astaroth not lost his memory and won Calladia over organically, I think the memory loss component provides a very interesting framework for a narrative about choosing our future over our past and over tradition—which is how I'd describe Astaroth's character arc, and that of the demon plane political leaders.
I think for me personally, this just wasn't a full five because of some nit-picky preferences on my part. Unlike the first book, the humor didn't always land for me, and I felt there were some heavy-handed references to Astaroth's past sex life. Every time Mariel and Oz were on page together, they were lovebirdy and cute (I guess it's a pet peeve of mine to cameo previous characters so heavy-handedly in love, making them feel less like individuals part of the new MCs' story). I think the ending was a little abrupt, especially since we don't get an epilogue to see how Calladia and Astaroth work out what their relationship looks like post-revolution. The plot (especially the end) felt like a bit of a repeat from the first book. None of this truly took too much away from my enjoyment, though.
Nonetheless, I'm excited to read the third book in this series to see where the gang ends up and to read another fun, supernatural romp!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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