December 29th

Reviewed by Sid Love

TITLE: Loving and Loathing Vegas

SERIES: Sleigh Ride (2015 Advent Calendar)

AUTHOR: Lex Chase

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

BLURB:

Jackson has loved Vegas since God created Man – literally. As demonic incubi hailing from the Seventh Circle of Hell. Jackson and Vegas have never been anything more than roommates. Now living among humans, they run Eaven, a TripAdvisor-recommended detour-worthy diner famous for its devilishly decadent pies. Business is dead on the holidays, and Jackson will gleefully stab himself with a spatula if he has to clean spotless pots and pans one more time.

For fun – or torture – Vegas makes him a bet that should Jackson win, they take a much-needed vacation. Should he lose, he’s doomed to clean out grease traps for all eternity. When the challenge is to fall in love with other people by Christmas, it proves Vegas isn’t the least bit interested. But when they find an abandoned baby in the trash, she could be the Christmas miracle to warm Jackson’s cynical heart.

REVIEW:

Disclaimer – I have tried not to include any spoilers in my review. However, some minor spoilers may be included and without mentioning them, the review would have been incomplete, according to me. Consider yourself warned.

I have a completely bad habit when it comes to picking books to read. I do NOT read blurbs at all and even if I do, I read it partially and if something about it catches my eye, it goes on my to-read list. With this book, it was the word Vegas that sealed the deal for me and for reasons I need not explain, I thought it was about a holiday in Vegas. I mean come on – how can you focus on anything else other than Vegas?

But mostly because of this habit, I have stumbled upon some really good books in the past – some that I wouldn’t have read otherwise – and this one right here was definitely an entertaining read!

Now that I have read the blurb, I think it does a decent job of summing up the story. We are introduced to the main characters Jackson and Vegas working in their restaurant and have no real work other than cleaning and re-cleaning the place. It’s Thanksgiving after all, and in a small town like Tezcatlipoca (YAY! I remembered!), people prefer being with their families rather than eating out. Jackson is really annoyed with his friend-slash-roommate-slash-all time crush for insisting that they still keep the place open. So when Vegas suggests playing a bet where – if Jackson won – he would not only agree to close down the place on every US holidays but also take a vacation on those holidays to places Jackson wants to go. All he has to do is fall in love with others. Pretty simple, right? Yeah?

Nope… not when you’ve had this big crush on your roommate for years and when I mean years… I mean years like centuries! You get the hint, this is not just a romantic story of two ordinary guys. And to add to the equation, there’s an abandoned baby they find in their trash.

This was totally my kind of story because of the supernatural element attached to it and the stories with incubus and succubus have always fascinated me. So finding out that the main characters are both incubi, the demons who are equivalent to a bottle of Viagra (see why I love them?!) and they are on Earth laying low amongst humans. Secondly, there was a baby in this one and we get to see how the little creature changes their lives completely. And Lex has written the baby and its tantrums so adorably that I went ‘aww!’ every single time I read a scene with the baby in it.

I loved Jackson’s personal growth as a character that the author showcased throughout the story. LLV is told from his POV and I enjoyed this journey with him. The author beautifully described Vegas from Jackson’s eyes and I was literally drooling over him. The built up to the climax was seriously hot – at least I thought so and I was expecting the sex sirens to go off all over the place.

However, it was disappointing to see my expectations let down. It was like a firework that crackled at the beginning but never reached the end of the sky. Let me clear it up – the sex was really good between the guys, but the problem with it was that it was too ordinary. Extra-ordinary for two human characters, yea, but too simple for two incubi. Maybe I was expecting too much, but that’s because I have read some great sex scenes between supernatural characters and comparatively, this fell short.

The characters as incubi remained mostly mysterious. The concept of incubus is really very interesting to me and I wanted to know more about stuff like how they’d found the vessels they had possessed or why Vegas would stop having sex, considering it would be so hard for him. I liked to think it was because he loved Jackson a lot, but then I wanted to know why suddenly he’d do so after dating several boyfriends (as per Jackson).

Even if I ignored all of that and the points in between the story I was left confused, I can’t ignore how the bet between them was quite vaguely discussed and I found it a bit silly how it ended. Okay, I was totally expecting something else but what we get doesn’t make sense considering what Vegas had initially talked about. Since the whole story depended on this bet, I personally feel the author should have given the readers a bit more details.

Still, for a short story, this ended up entertaining me for the most part and the author has some really good skills when it comes to describing a scene, a character and the surroundings. And for sure, you’ll definitely fall in love with the baby if not with the MCs!

RATING: 

BUY LINKS:

Dreamspinner Press – Anthology

Dreamspinner Press – Single Story

Amazon