LoveVampires - the website dedicated to vampire fiction.
With vampire book reviews, information and author interviews.

Something Wicked

Michelle Rowen

Published 2010             348 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

Every woman has a sexy demon inside her just waiting to get out, but for Eden Riley it’s a little different. Her inner demon is named Darrak, and he’s been inhabiting bodies for the past 300 years. In the daytime, thanks to her special psychic energy, he’s able to take physical shape – a shape she wouldn’t mind getting her hands on, if it wasn’t a threat to her immortal soul…

Because of her possession, Eden now has uncontrollable black magic at her fingertips, and she and Darrak are trying to end the curse that binds them before the situation gets any worse. To do it, they’ll have to get tangled up with some unsavoury characters from the underworld. When sparks and spells fly, they could get the distance they need…or each have their own private hell to pay.

The Review

Something Wicked is the second part in the Living In Eden paranormal romance trilogy by Michelle Rowen. These books feature Eden Riley, a woman from Toronto whose patchy psychic ability got her into more trouble than she could have foreseen when she was possessed by a demon. The initial demonic possession and the start of the romance between Eden and Darrak, the demon she’d sharing her living space with, take place in the first book in the series (The Demon In Me) and I’d recommend reading that book before Something Wicked.

Events in Something Wicked start a few days after The Demon In Me finished. Eden is still adjusting to all the paranormal weirdness that was introduced into her life in the earlier story. Thanks to Darrak’s demonic possession she’s gone from being a psychic with a fairly unreliable talent to a powerful black witch who can wield magic by will alone – at the cost of her immortal soul. She’s also gained a couple of roomies – Darrak, the demon, and Leena a shapeshifter who turns into a house cat and needs a safe place to hideout for reasons unknown. Being the part owner of a detective agency that deals in supernatural cases is her new day job but, unusually, the story doesn’t deal with any of the supernatural mysteries that you’d expect – its primary focus is the developing romantic relationship between Darrak and Eden.

Something Wicked sees Darrak and Eden still unsuccessfully searching for a way to break the curse that ties them together. Darrak meets up with an old friend, a demon called Theo who used to be his best friend when he lived in Hell. Theo promises to help Darrak break his curse but he has some strange (and demonic) ideas about how to help. He proves to be a bad influence on Darrak – reminding him of the evil things that a demon should be and soon has Darrak lying to Eden and generally acting like a jerk. This goes on for a large chunk of the story and makes Darrak a more annoying character than the oddly human, sexy demon readers came to know and love in The Demon In Me. In fact if you haven’t first read The Demon In Me it might be hard to understand why Eden doesn’t just get him exorcised already.

The resulting novel is an enjoyable, fun romance but with Darrak being more of a pain in the arse than romantic hero material for a lot of the story it’s not quite as good as The Demon In Me. Something Wicked introduces angels into the plotline which takes the story to some unexpected new places, in particular I liked the idea that angels can be obnoxious drunks…

Mixing comedy, fantasy and romance to good effect, Something Wicked shouldn’t disappoint Michelle Rowen’s many fans and nicely sets up readers for next part of the story, That Old Back Magic, scheduled for release in December 2011.

LoveVampires Review Rating: