Decking The Balls
Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire
When I tell you I was really excited to be doing holiday themed content this month, I was really excited. And we started off so strong! Three holidays and a Wedding was a legitimate delight. And then things went downhill from there, like a snowball in a vintage cartoon.
Last week’s book adventures were obviously not ideal. But I rallied, excited this week to feature a book with the holiday I celebrate, the Winter Solstice (I’m Pagan). And with high hopes, I picked up Jenny Bayliss’ A December To Remember. I was most excited about this book out of all the ones I had planned to read because the premise was about Pagans, rooted in reality, and about it was about sisters! I love a good witchy romance with more supernatural elements, but stories about witches who aren’t out here with Samantha Stephens-type powers twitching their noses and making things happen are few and far between. Hence my excitement for a holiday story more reflective of my lived experiences.
I did not put down A December to Remember because in wasn’t good. In fact, the first few chapters were well written and the characters were interesting. And that’s why I put it down. It was good in literary fiction way, with a lot of plot lines and a lot of tension between the estranged sisters. It probably had romance at some point, but two of the three sisters were in relationships of varying levels of stability and the third sister was trying to get away from a terrible ex. I put it down because that’s a lot of thematically heavy stuff and it’s holiday time and I just want some fluff. Between end of the semester chaos at work (mostly menial tasks, but there’s a lot of them) and the entire world being a raging apocalyptic dumpster fire, and then my own personal life chaos, my brain is soup and I just can’t handle four plotlines and heavy feelings and themes.
My signed (!!!!!) copy of A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch arrived last week, and I was planning on reading it during the post-Christmas pre-New Years lull, figuring there surely had to be another book set at the Winter Solstice, even a fantasy one. And there is! A Court of Frost and Starlight, which is book 3.5 in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series (it’s a novella that bridges the events of books 1-3 with A Court of Silver Flames, my favorite in the series, and the books that are set to follow). I read all the ACoTaR books earlier this year and I love them. I am obsessed. I also know that reviewing a book from the middle of a series is maybe not the vibe, so, A Demon’s Guide it would be this week.
I paid real adult dollars to have Sarah Hawley sign and doodle on my copy and it was an excellent use of my $19. It also came with art and stickers! So it was like a Solstice present to myself from myself a month ago when I pre-ordered it. But the real gift was the witty and aggressive banter between Calladia and Astaroth.
A Demon’s Guide is the second book in Hawley’s Glimmer Falls series, following A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon, which I wrote about back in October. We find ourselves back in Glimmer Falls, mere hours after Calladia punted Astaroth over a mountain with a well aimed shot to the nuts for trying to steal her best friend’s soul (This act of well deserved vengeance is important later). Calladia, after being kicked out of a bar for brawling, finds Astaroth in an alley, about to be finished off by Moloch, another demon from the demon high council, and not realizing who it is laying on the ground, saves him from Moloch.
Turns out Astaroth has a bad case of amnesia, and does not remember the events of the day, or much of anything for that matter. So of course Calladia (reluctantly) takes him in, which results in Moloch tracking them down and blowing up Calladia’s house with some magic fireballs and puts the pair of nemeses on the run in Calladia’s vehicle Clifford the Little Red Truck. Of course in true romance fashion, they don’t stay nemeses for long, what with there only being one tent and all.
While not holiday themed at all, this was exactly what my soup brain needed this week. Calladia is what my late grandfather would refer to as “a hard woman” and I love her so much. Would I ever buy Astaroth’s 3 day personal journey from a terrible evil villain to actually a good guy in real life? Probably not. But Calladia’s presence and threats to explode his testicles definitely helped. Plus it’s fiction and I love a good redemption arc.
I think I liked this one a bit more than A Witch’s Guide, if only because I liked Calladia a bit more as a character than Mariel (who was still great). It was also a little spicier than the first book, which I’m always on board for. And so much banter. And brawling. Maybe not a festive read, but definitely a good one.
Worse comes to worst next week, you might get a breakdown of the best American Girl Holiday stories. We’ll see how it goes.
Other Things I Read and Watched This Week
The Boy and the Heron - It’s not a Ghibli movie without some little dudes. And a lot of emotional healing.
Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Samantha Allen - Bonkers. Buh. Onkers.