Fin­ished Hell’s Belles by Jackie Kessler. Jackie won a copy of Hot Mama dur­ing one of my con­tests and was nice enough to sug­gest we do a book swap. Thanks, Jackie!

This book is about Jezebel, a suc­cubus (demon) who seduces men and steals their souls dur­ing sex. But when there’s a major change down in Hell, Jezebel decides to get while the get­ting is good. But her supe­ri­ors aren’t about to let her go that easy, and send demons out to search for her and bring her back. With a witch’s reluc­tant help, Jezebel dis­guises her­self as a human and goes to work as an exotic dancer to escape her pur­suers. What she doesn’t count on is falling for Paul Hamil­ton, a sexy guy with a secret of his own.

I’d heard of this series, but I’d never had a chance to read it until now. This book and espe­cially the char­ac­ter of Jezebel reminded me a lot of Mary­Jan­ice Davidson’s Undead series. Jezebel is bub­bly, full of life, and a lit­tle ditzy, just like Betsy Tay­lor in the Undead books. The book is writ­ten in first-person, and Jezebel’s breezy voice really shines.

I like fun char­ac­ters who don’t take them­selves too seri­ously, and Jezebel was cer­tainly one of those, although she has her dif­fi­cul­ties adjust­ing to being a human. For instance, she can’t under­stand why peo­ple will­ingly drink milk, which she finds utterly dis­gust­ing. But Jezebel loves her first taste of pizza, pastries, and shop­ping, of course. Espe­cially when she’s charg­ing every­thing on some­one else’s credit card. 

The strip club set­ting was inter­est­ing and rather depress­ing at the same time. Not because of the writ­ing, but just because strip clubs aren’t the nicest places to work. Espe­cially when you have a creep of a boss like Jezebel does — and her demon friends keep pop­ping into his body.

One thing I do want to men­tion is the plot doesn’t unfold in a straight line. Whole chap­ters cut between the action at the strip club and Jezebel’s for­mer life in Hell, slowly reveal­ing why she left in the first place. So, you really have to pay atten­tion and remem­ber what’s going on between the flash­backs. But it all comes together nicely in the end.

Over­all, if you’re look­ing for a lighter, very steamy take on demons, you’ll prob­a­bly like this book.

So, thumbs up.

Up next: My Big Fat Super­nat­ural Hon­ey­moon anthology