Not To Be Trusted In a Bookstore With a Credit Card

Summary:

Dante Walker is flippin' awesome, and he knows it. His good looks, killer charm, and stellar confidence has made him one of Hell's best--a soul collector. His job is simple, weed through humanity and label those round rears with a big red good or bad stamp.Dante doesn't know why Boss Man wants Charlie, nor does he care. This assignment means only one thing to him, and that's a permanent ticket out of Hell. But after Dante meets the quirky, Nerd Alert chick he's come to collect--he realizes this assignment will test his abilities as a collector, and uncover emotions deeply buried.

2.5/5 stars

This book had such great promise. When I read the summary I was so excited and when I actually started reading the book I got even happier. By the end of the book I lost those feelings.

There wasn't anything really special about Dante. He's the typical bad boy character who also has the advantage of working for Hell. He's the guy all the girls want and he knows it. That's why I was excited when we first met Charlie. In most books the bad boy falls for the pretty "girl-next-door" and Charlie didn't seem like that kind of character to me. She's described as a good girl with few friends and who is an all around good person. But mainly she's not pretty. That was kind of shocking for me, that there was a main character in a romance novel who's a great person and who the bad boy falls for but who is also not conventionally pretty in any way. But she still liked herself.

I enjoyed that. I will admit that at times the naivety of Charlie's character bugged me a bit but that's not why things went down hill.

Things went wrong when they started changing Charlie.

(spoiler)

The way Dante was supposed to collect Charlies soul was to get her to sell it to him in exchange for wishes. At first she's reluctant but in the end she signs it over to him anyway. Dante convinced her to start wishing for things like better hair, and better skin. And once she starts she can't stop. By the end of the book she's described as a model. This perfect type of girl who has perfect everything. It would have been nicer if she could have stayed the way she was in the beginning. By the end of the book there's not much left that's special about it.

Other than changing Charlie's appearance the last thing that bugged me was the ending. The author introduces way too many characters in the last couple of chapters and doesn't wrap everything up very well. I know that it was done to first introduce characters that will be in the next book but it just came off as very rushed.

This is the first book in a series.