Would probably get 5 stars if it wasn't for one sexy scene that involved food which always grosses me out a lot and was very hard to read. Other than that, it's an incredible book. Well written, good story, even a reveal I didn't see coming! Which is rare and much appreciated when it happens. ( )

I was intrigued by the premise, namely, the demon portals, befanged cupcakes, and superheroes. Those things are present but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. Most of that is the style, which didn't completely work for me.

Things I loved: relationships between women that aren't solely based around duuuudes; Aveda's superhero-ness is actually a product of training and her power plays virtually no part of it; Evie's and Aveda's character growth; that the main ladies are Asian American and they aren't simply kung-fu masters or geishas but have experiences that seem authentic and multi-layered.

What I didn't love: the lack of tension and the slapstick tone. There isn't ever a real sense of urgency (as there should be, if there are demon portals in your city). And a lot of the humor just didn't jibe with me. I think it would work for fans of Shelly Laurenston or Jill Myles. Ultimately, while it was fun, I didn't feel totally engaged.

I'll try the next book in the series though, as I did like [b: One Con Glory|10120747|One Con Glory|Sarah Kuhn|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347404871s/10120747.jpg|7502182]. And also, even though I've yet to encounter a Puerto Rican/Black/Japanese lady in a book, I fucking loved reading about people who sound like me and my own group of mixed-ass friends. ( )

Featured in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/05/27/vamps-in-denim/

A few years ago, demons tried to invade Earth via interdimensional portals. They failed, and for some reason several humans ended up with superpowers as a result. Aveda Jupiter (real name: Annie Chang) is one of them, and she's now San Francisco's most beloved and hardest working superhero, battling the much weaker demons that occasionally turn up. Evie Tanaka is her childhood friend and personal assistant. She's used to dealing with Aveda's tantrums and is, in fact, an expert at making sure Aveda's public persona remains perfect. Evie always keeps her emotions in control, even when work is stressful or Bea (her younger sister, who she's been raising since their parents died) acts particularly rebellious. Because she knows if she slips up, she might accidentally kill someone.

Most of the superpowers people got after the demons came were relatively weak. Aveda, for example, got telekinesis, but she can only just barely move things. Evie's power, on the other hand, is much more dramatic and terrifying: she can light things on fire.

When Aveda injures herself, she convinces a reluctant Evie to pose as her for an event, during which Evie accidentally reveals her superpower. Now Evie's stuck pretending to be Aveda for a while longer, even though she'd much rather fade into the background and let Aveda have the spotlight.

Since there seems to be some confusion over on both the Goodreads and LibraryThing pages for this book: this is not a YA novel. Teens might very well enjoy it and that's fine, but as far as I can tell this was neither written as a YA novel nor marketed as one. Evie and Aveda are both adults (except during the short flashbacks to when they first met and became friends), and Evie ends up in a sexual relationship with one of the book's other characters. It's misleading to call this YA.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way: overall I thought this was decent. Initially, I really liked Evie's "voice" (this was written in the first person), although I gradually became more and more frustrated with some of the messy emotional aspects, particularly with respect to her friendship with Aveda. Who, honestly, came across as a terrible friend during a good chunk of the book, despite the author's efforts to convince readers otherwise with a flashback to the time they first met and Annie (Aveda) wholeheartedly defended Evie against anyone who made her feel bad or embarrassed. If I remember right, they were the only two Asian girls at their school, and Annie's more forceful personality paired up well Evie, who preferred to be more in the background even back then.

When Evie got her superpower, she had to be more tightly emotionally controlled in order to keep her fire ability from slipping out. Which lead to something she privately called her Dead-Inside-O-Tron, aka her lack of sexual desire. Evie wasn't written as asexual, and I felt like that wording emphasized that the way she was dealing with her superpower wasn't comfortable or natural for her, but I can understand why this might put some readers off.

Although there was definitely an overarching story involving demons, a large part of this book was focused on the characters' relationships and emotions. Evie and Aveda had to deal with the toxic aspects of their friendship if they wanted to salvage the things that originally made their friendship so strong. Evie and Bea had their own baggage to deal with, and great gobs of things that they needed to talk about. I was glad the book dealt with these things eventually, but there were plenty of moments that were hard to take up to that point.

Evie's romance with Nate was okay. I'm not really a fan of pairings between characters who constantly argue with each other, and that was basically their relationship up to the point Evie realized she was attracted to him.

I plan to try the next book at some point. It looks like that one might focus more on Aveda (it seems like this was originally planned to be a trilogy, one book for each prominent female character, but then it continued on?).

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

Not a bad read, but I do wish the characters had a little more depth and were a little more rounded out. They pretty much fit into cardboard cutouts of themselves and the bad gal really isn't all that awful in the end, for all she wants to take over San Francisco. Even Evie, the viewpoint character, finds that motivation weak.

The relationship between Evie and Nate needed a lot more work for me to believe they have anything beyond the bedroom scenes. As it is, the book could have been written without any bedroom scenes and nothing would have been lost in what plot there is, since they neither advance or otherwise enhance what is in the story already.

Glad I borrowed this one from the library since it's not worth the $8 the publisher wants for it. :| ( )