Devil May Care Book Review: Our Favorite Daughter Of The Devil Is Back!

It’s a triple-feature book day here on Pretty Opinionated! Between the Marriage Caper book blast, the review of Swept into the Darkness, and this review, I hope you have your Kindles charged or your page-turning finger all toned up!

A very, very long time ago (like a year and a half ago, which is a century in Internet years) I had the pleasure of reviewing Luck of the Devil by Patricia Elmer. It was one of my favorite books of that year, and I’ve been waiting oh-so-impatiently for the next installment. After all, Elmer left quite a few loose ends untied at the end of that book! It took her over a year to get the second book out, but it was worth the wait. Devil May Care is the second novel in the Speak of the Devil series, and it pretty much picks up right where Luck of the Devil left off.

To refresh your memory, Faith Bettincourt is the Devil’s baby girl, the youngest of three children. She’s also the most normal of the bunch, which isn’t really saying much. I mean, she is the Devil’s kid, after all! Unlike her smarmy Demon of Gluttony brother and nutso sister, though, Faith is pretty down to earth. She’s a pediatric nurse and a genuinely good person..er, demon. In Luck of the Devil, Faith fell for the boy next door, who turned out to be an angel (not the sweet cherubs with wings, his mother is actually more evil than the Devil himself, who, as it turns out, really isn’t that bad of a guy…er, demon). Her best friend had fallen for her Fallen brother, the aforementioned Demon of Gluttony, after finding herself turned into a succubus during a drunken night. Most of us wake up with hangovers and eat a lot of salty food to replenish our electrolytes, Lisa woke up and started eating souls.

I’m not going to rehash the entire first book. Technically, you can read Devil May Care without reading Luck of the Devil, but why would you want to? They’re much better when read together. In the sequel, Faith finds herself still dealing with the fallout from the stolen drugs at her hospital, and gets the surprise of her life when her ex-fiance, who went a little round the bend when he found out he was dating a demon, then lost his memory in an act of God (literally, God owed Faith a favor) shows up on her pediatrics floor to help solve the mystery of the stolen meds.

As if that’s not enough of a shock to the system, Faith and Matt’s romantic apartment-floor picnic is rudely interrupted by Brenda, the angel that Matt was supposed to marry. She’s an annoying little twit who clearly has a hidden agenda. Since Faith’s life is never easy, she’s also trying to plan the wedding of Lisa to Tolliver (the Demon of Gluttony), and her nature-worshiping mom’s remarriage to her father! Obviously, hilarity ensues.

Once again, Elmer has written a strong novel that combines comedic genius, dysfunctional family dynamics, and a strong splash of mystery that keeps readers engaged from the first to last page. While I really didn’t like Brenda’s character and thought Faith’s willingness to help out the woman was over-the-top naive, I loved the rest of the story as much as the first, and I’m hoping the next installment comes a little sooner than over a year from now.