Incubus AdoredRating: 3.5 stars
Buy Link:
Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel


For Tabbis, God’s law is clear: if it’s not an angel or a human, it’s probably a demon and therefore evil. Tabbis is young and the closest to his Creator and he has a tendency to see the world through a black and white filter. And that makes Peirs something dangerous. The weary incubus challenges Tabbis’ idea of right and wrong and even makes him question the wisdom of the god he calls Father.

Peirs is the last of his kind and after being held in slavery by an angel for centuries, he just wants to stay safe and protect the child he carries. But he has to feed and while his options are limited, he’s found a stable source of sustenance. Tabbis changes all that. The rough around the edges angel cannot help his love for Peirs, who is equally powerless against the kindness and safety Tabbis offers. Love is never easy, but when Tabbis and Peirs defy the will of God, they face the destruction of the family they have created.

Incubus Adored was something of a head scratcher. There are things done very well in this book, but there is also a chaos to it that left me exasperated. Let’s look at the positive first. The author has done an excellent job of taking the traditional representations of incubi, succubi, angels, and God and turning them upside down. No one is quite who these seem here and Heaven doesn’t come off looking particularly good. There’s a fairy strong world-building base and while it’s not always as defined as I would preferred, there’s more than enough to help readers envision the world in which Tabbis and Peirs live. It’s clearly setting up further novels as well, so I expected the world-building will expand as the series down.

For all the good, Incubus Adored is properly bonkers. Most of this comes down to the writing style, which reads as choppy and uneven. Transitions are rough and there were times I was left scrambling to figure out what just happened and to whom. The last half of the book takes an abrupt shift in the narrative, but there’s no flow to the action. It’s everywhere and nowhere all at once. There were more than a few times I was ready to start shaking my e-reader in sheer frustration. The prose is horrifically purple at times and there are moments when it threatens to overwhelm the positives of the book.

There’s a lot to like with Incubus Adored. There’s also a lot to dislike. A clever twist and strong world building make this a more original than usual entry into the paranormal family. But odd transitions and an unwieldy style of writing made reading this one more work than it should have been. There are others in the series and I’d be curious to see if the next book is more streamlined and smoother or if the chaos of Incubus Adored continues.

sue sig