Review: Personal Demons by Lisa Desrochers

Personal Demons

by: Lisa Desrochers

Publication Date: September 14, 2010

Published by: Tor Teen

368 pages

I bought this book

From Amazon....

If you had to choose between Heaven and Hell, which would it be?

Are you sure about that...?

Frannie Cavanaugh is a good Catholic girl with a wicked streak. She's spent years keeping everyone at a distance--even her closest friends--and it seems her senior year will be more of the same...until Luc Cain enrolls in her class. No one knows where he came from, but Frannie can't seem to stay away from him. What she doesn't know is that Luc works in Acquisitions--for Hell--and she possesses a unique skill set that has the king of Hell tingling with anticipation. All Luc has to do is get her to sin, and he's as tempting as they come. Frannie doesn't stand a chance.

Unfortunately for Luc, Heaven has other plans, and the angel, Gabe, is going to do whatever it takes to make sure that Luc doesn't get what he came for. And it isn't long before they find themselves fighting for more than just her soul.

But if Luc fails, there will be Hell to pay...for all of them.

Why I picked it up: Cause I love the whole good vs. evil thing

Why I couldn't put it down: I almost DID put it down, a few times. The first 150 pages or so were downright tedious for me. Let me sum it up for you...

Luc shows up at school, he thinks Frannie is hot, she thinks he is hot.
Gabe shows up at school. Frannie thinks he is hot.
LOTS of tingling going on.
Lockers, lunchroom, lockers, lunchroom.
Frannie kisses Luc, thinks she might be in love.
Frannie kisses Gabe, thinks she might be in love.
Tingle, lockers, tingle, lunchroom.

Oh and lots of Luc "smelling her ginger" whenever Frannie was feeling attracted to him. Was I the only one who found this phrase a little ewwww worthy??

In other words, nothing really interesting happens for the first half of the book. Now granted, I understand characters need to be introduced and things need to be established early on, but by the time any real action gets underway, I was so tired of keeping up with who was sitting by who at lunchtime that I really didn't care about any of the characters. Frannie's so called possible love for these guys was based on nothing more than physical attraction. It would have been nice for her to have something else to go on before she started locking lips with whichever one was in closest proximity. When it comes down to it, I really didn't like Frannie that much.

And as for the boys...Luc's description was NOTHING like the Luc on the cover...did the artist even read the book?? Not to mention that for being a demon, he really wasn't that bad of a guy. And Gabe...well, Gabe felt more like a secondary character than a contender for leading man.

I will have to say things did get more interesting halfway into the book. Desrochers delivers some clever and unique ideas that I think would ultimately have worked better if the hormones had been scaled back and the personalities played up. When it came down to it, I didn't really care enough about either of the guys (or Frannie for that matter) to be invested in who she chose and what everyone's fate would be.

There are a lot of great concepts introduced though, and I'm hoping the next book will focus more on them than the hormones and the love triangle. I know there will be lots of people who DO like this book, it just wasn't one of my favorites.

3 out 5 stars