"Devilishly Hot" by Kathy Love

Annie Lou Riddle had a plan: Move to New York City. Break into the fashion industry. Work her way to the top. Nowhere in that scenario did she expect to accidentally sell her soul in exchange for a job at Hot! Magazine. Oops. Demons, it seems, aren't big on letting mortals off the hook. Now Annie is stuck working as assistant/personal slave to Finola White - diva extraordinaire, and glamorous she-devil. Whatever Finola wants, she gets, and she wants Annie to match her up with Nick Rossi, the gorgeous detective investigating shady doings at Hot! Frankly, Annie sees the appeal. Nick is effortlessly sexy, rugged, charming - and the one man Annie should definitely not be flirting with, or kissing, or... Oops. But some loves are too devilishly hot to resist...

A light, fluff romance from Kathy Love. Not much different than her other books, although the humans play a much bigger part in this first book in a new series. Nick Rossi, our hunky detective, meets country-girl-with-big-dreams Annie Lou Riddle while investigating some twenty missing persons, all past employees of Hot! Magazine, and all somehow tied to Finola White. It's definitely a case of wanting the forbidden fruit, and the relationship between Nick and Annie develops nicely, albeit predictably.

What bothered me most of all about this was the misleading blurb on the back of the book. Annie didn't "accidentally" sell her soul; she knew full well what would happen when she signed her 10-year contract with Finola. In fact, the idea of being sent to Hell pretty much consumes Annie's every waking moment, until she meets Nick. Then his sexy body occupies her thoughts, which make it much more difficult for her to concentrate on her job, meaning Hell might be closer than she thinks. Biggest disappoinment was the super-rushed scene where Annie finally tells Nick why she can't just quit her job. Um, hello? It was one of the things I wanted to know, and the author pretty much has Annie say "yeah, I got a call to work at Hot! and I really wanted the job, but it meant I had to sell my soul to get it". Where's the backstory? Why would a girl like Annie go to such lengths to work at the magazine? What about the scene where she first meets Finola or whoever interviewed her and she's all excited about the job - until she reads the fine print? It's such an important plot point, the danger to her soul, and yet we never really see why she was willing to offer it up in the first place. I would have been much more interested - and invested - in Annie if I knew what had really happened. Having Annie tell Nick just did not work for me.

What I did enjoy was that Finola White, a demon who is hellish in every single way, truly embraces her last name and does everything in white: her clothing, her office, her flowers, even the food she offers at an event. Sweet play on our idea of evil and the typical meanings associated with the color white. I also loved the teeny-tiny little twist at the end, one I did not see coming. It had me laughing and saying "Now that was cool!"

Overall, I'd give it a solid three stars. It's not great, but it's not horrible, either. (It could use some editing, though, as I caught the usual typos: incorrect punctuation, wrongs words, etc.)