Devour Me by Emily Rath

Did I expect to love a book where one of the leads literally doesn’t have a bottom half? No, I did not. Do I typically recommend books that end on a cliffhanger? No, I do not, because they make me rage. NOT COOL, Emily Rath!

However.

Devour Me is a bright, shiny, joyous exception. Our three leads are Birdie, a human grad student looking for a job and a place to stay, who takes her best friend up on an offer to spend the summer at Burr Island; Jasper, a cranky witch who is the high priest of his coven, which has lived on and protected Burr Island for centuries; and Dáinn, a wraith who is bound to an evil mistress who has sent Dáinn to devour Jasper’s soul so she can at long last possess the secrets of the Burr Island witches.

Dáinn is basically made of shadows. He has an upper half mostly made of bones, and he wears a … crop-top robe? With a cowl? And his bottom half is swirly shadow tentacles? Man, WHAT. He is clueless in many of the ways of humans. He’s earnest and unintentionally hilarious, and he’s utterly charming. On the night his mistress orders him to kill Jasper, he finds Jasper outside of his shop on the island, and he begins to devour Jasper’s soul. Jasper is nearly dead when Birdie steps outside and sees them. She orders Dáinn to stop, and he does (which apparently was previously thought to be impossible—once a wraith starts to consume a soul, that wraith can’t stop until the job is done).

Dáinn is already mostly in love with Jasper because he’s spent weeks haunting Jasper at the orders of the evil mistress, and he falls in love with Birdie at first sight. So now all Dáinn has to do is figure out how to defy his mistress, get his best friend to render up a human body for him, claim his human and his witch, hatch a plot to kill the evil witch and free himself, and figure out how on earth Birdie has the power to command him.

Easy peasy.

This book is the best kind of campy fun. The villains are almost comically bad. The side characters are all distinct and intriguing (special mention to Pickles the cat and Baz the mage). And the village at Burr Island is a place I would definitely love to spend a lot of time in.

I will say, though, that this is an awfully long book. It’s like 85% exposition and slow buildup, with some very spicy sex scenes to liven up the proceedings. And then just as the plot really picks up, BAM—a cliffhanger. I like that rath took the time to really develop so many characters and do all the world-building, but I also would have liked more advancement of the plot.

Will our heroes prevail? I guess I’ll have to wait many moons to find out. Note: I read an ARC of the book, which comes out August 4. Before the second one comes out, I might revisit this in audio.