A starving incubus.
A bear alone.
Jasper Jones is Lyric’s most pitiful incubus. He can’t feed and doesn’t want to if it means hurting people. When a witch gives him a chance at breaking the cycle of hunger, he rushes half cocked into the woods in search of a cure.
Caleb moved into Poisonwood Forest to escape the crowded city of Lyric, but it’s lonely by himself. He doesn’t expect to find his … doesn’t expect to find his mate when he trips over an unconscious young man in the middle of the woods, but there he is, perfect—except for a peculiar fondness for processed cookies.
Their only problem is that Jasper’s sick, and when he doesn’t get better, his one shot at survival is in the hands of a bear shifter who’ll do anything to save him.
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Jasper is an incubus who is starving because he is afraid to feed on people. Caleb is a bear who is living alone until he stumbles over his mate. There are plenty of funny misunderstandings and some sexy times. I really enjoyed this book and immediately went to book 2.
I loved a story with an incubus that wanted true love instead of whoring his way around the world. Loved that he tried to always do the right thing even if it hurt him. Loved how fiercely the bear loved him back. my only complaint is that the ending was rushed feeling.
I really wanted to like this book. It has a beautiful cover with a stunning young man standing shyly by a protective bear. The blurb immediately explains the cover – the young man is an incubus and the bear is actually a bear shifter. Pretty standard for a paranormal romance. The blurb promises more paranormal romance goodies – an incubus who’s starving and needs to find a way to eat, a lonely shifter bear who needs to save his One True Love. This is the perfect setup for some sweet romance seasoned with hurt/comfort components and an overall fairytale theme. So I started this book extremely excited and settle in for what I expected would be an enjoyable read.
It didn’t take me long to realize that there were massive problems with the book. I don’t know the writing process of the authors, but it felt like this was more of a roleplay collab or self-indulgent fanfiction piece than an actual published story. The writing style was rough with authors doing a lot of telling and explaining. The character development and plot pacing was weird, the story felt disjointed, and some of the sentences, paragraphs, and transition scenes felt unstructured and out of place. There’s a lot I can forgive in books, especially short, sweet books meant for a quick entertainment, but I need to have characters that are well crafted. These characters felt flat, and poorly developed.
****Potential Spoilers****
The book starts with Jasper Jones, a young incubus, fighting against his urges to have sex and eat his fill on sexual energy. After all, he is an incubus and eating off of sexual energy is what incubi do. BUT, Jasper isn’t THAT type of incubus. He’s an incubus with morals and a heart and has decided to not feed on humans because they can’t consent, and thus sentencing himself to a slow death by starvation. This is all highly dramatic, but it falls flat for a few reasons. First, Jasper explains he came into his incubus heritage when he was 16 years old, and he learned he was a human sex magnetic. He apparently had an awkward heavy petting session with his straight best friend. Jasper blames the entire incident on himself and conveniently ignores that awkward sexual interactions happen in high school to many people, and Jasper was just as much as a victim to his own incubus powers as his friend was. Second, Jasper lives with his siblings. His sister, at least, seems to care for him greatly. Instead of talking with her and figuring out a workable solution to his guilt over feeding on humans, he keeps his mouth shuts and acts tragic while forcing his loved one to watch him die in front of her. That’s a pretty awful thing to do to a loved one. Third, Jasper suddenly becomes a sexual assault and abuse expert by following the Me Too Movement, and has decided that all incubi are as bad as someone who commits a sexual assault. He further qualifies it by stating that since drunk people can’t consent to sex then a human under the incubus influence can’t consent either. I take a lot of issue with this because the authors take a serious subject like sexual assault and use it as a motivator for why Jasper needs to starve to death. Jasper makes no effort to find a way to get informed consent from a human, and decides that all humans must be unable to consent to sex if they are under the influence of anything, even if prior consent is given. (Plus, I would like to point out that being drunk – NOT blackout, passed out, or wasted and vomiting, but a still functioning drunk – doesn’t mean someone can’t consent to sex. There are many people who have consensual drunk sex, and imposing a blanket statement on a complex and serious issue is something I find disturbing.) Jasper is so willing to stick to his moral high ground that he has determined that “he was sure that there was no way to be both a demon and a decent person.” This all happens in the first chapter and left me with a very low opinion of Jasper.
The book doesn’t get better from there. He goes off to eat a poisonous flower, and is saved by Caleb, the bear shifter on the cover. Caleb is gruff and thinks Jasper need to eat, so he stuffs the incubus with cookies and milk, and other foods. But Jasper is slowly dying, because he can’t absorb any nutrients from this regular food. He needs to have sex, which by the way, he’s having with Caleb. However, Jasper refuses to actually feed off the CONSENSUAL sex he’s having with Caleb, and continues to slowly kill himself. Caleb, the poor guy, has no idea why Jasper is dying and is getting upset. I would just like to reiterate that this is such a horrific thing to do to someone you care for. Jasper is making Caleb watch him die and never tells Caleb what’s going on. Jasper insists on staying with Caleb and putting him through this horror. This isn’t fair to Caleb and it’s cruel and extremely selfish of Jasper. For someone who’s main motivation is his higher moral standards, he a huge hypocrite.
All of a sudden Caleb decides to a hunt a demon bear or monster bear, or whatever, and get the beast’s heart so Jasper can eat it and suddenly stop dying. I’m not sure. At this point I stopped trying to make sense of the story and just skimmed forward.
**** End of Potential Spoilers****
Overall Two Stars: The book ends with a happy ending, but I was far from satisfied, however, there were some sexy moments between Caleb and Jasper that were well done, but there really wasn’t much else I liked. Judging from the other reviews, it seems that other people really enjoyed the book. I’m happy for them, but it wasn’t to my taste. I won’t be continuing this series.
Love is cooking and Oreos
“What we are isn’t who we are.” That is so very true where Jasper is concerned, especially when it comes to the majority of his family. He is the opposite of everything you think of when you hear the word demon, minus one aspect. He is legit cute and makes a dang fine twinkubus. I adore him and want to smush him with hugs and love. Caleb makes me swoon. He’s smart, sexy and I love his grumpy bearness. I definitely wouldn’t mind hibernating with him. Though these two have some ups and downs, they make my heart flower with happiness and love. A fantastic beginning to what I know is going to be a magical series.