The Twice-Sold Soul by Katie Hallahan

TL;DR: A very strong start that lost me a little at the end. I’ll probably continue the series as it shows a lot of promise.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much to the publisher!

Plot: McKeena, who has been on the run for ten years, is hoodwinked by an ex to return home… and things get messier.
Characters: I really liked the cast here, they were diverse and interesting. I did see the twist with one of them but I liked all of them.
Setting: A small, very magical town. It felt fairly well done. I’d like a little more in the next installments.
Romance/Magic: The romance was… questionable. There were a TON of red flags that I don’t think I can get past in this book. The magic was a loose one, not fully explained but perhaps that’s too come.

Thoughts:

Let me tell you what, the beginning of this book had me stuck in. I was in it for the long haul, I liked where and what we were doing and I loved how this felt like an old school urban fantasy book. Unfortunately it lost it’s grip on me about half way through, and I’m a little bummed about it!

McKenna returns home after running for 10 years and finds out her hometown is not in a good way. Her arrival doesn’t help and she ends up trying to save her old friends and family and keeping her existence there on the down low. This has the trope that I don’t know will work for everyone, which is a cast that already know each other and have relationships. We get some flashbacks (which I wasn’t crazy about) but otherwise we see these relationships that McKenna left being reforged slowly. The story and plot was super interesting, I liked the ideas there. I think what lost me was the whiplash of the interpersonal, especially between our main character and her love interest.

Remi started out as a very interesting character, an archdemon living effectively as a human with a body. But we find out more about her and her actions and I couldn’t ignore the red flags there. Since her actions really change and move the plot at times I think that’s where I slipped out the grip of it. She’s an archdemon who is ‘learning’ to be human but seems to be fairly well suited to it except for the few times we can use her mess ups as conflict. Not to mention those conflicts, those mess ups, they’re kind of big to me. Like BIG red flags big. It was hard to look past in the context.

All that said this is a series I’ll be watching and probably continuing. I loved the feel of it, it reminded me of the old urban fantasy books I’d pick up randomly. It also still had an excellent tune up with modern sensibilities too. There was so much here I liked but it didn’t quite stick that landing. If you love urban fantasy and you’re looking for something different but somewhat nostalgic this is a good pickup. There is a lot of potential here and I’m interested to see the author reach that.

3 Stars