An Ali Release Day Review: Breaking Hell’s Rules by Lyssa Dering

When succubus Reth finally meets their soul quota and gains freedom from Hell, they decide to take up residence in New Orleans. Immediately they discard the body they’ve been wearing since 1952 and slip into something a little more virile, pleased to find they get a cozy apartment for their trouble. Too bad the apartment has a joint lease with their body’s ex-boyfriend Jude.

Jude is walking around with a black eye and a bad attitude, and when Reth tries to explain things, Jude doesn’t believe them. Plus, he refuses to move out. Reth doesn’t want to take Jude’s soul, and they really like this body. So they show him some succubus action minus the soul-grabbing, hoping to scare him off.

But they never expected for the mortal to take a liking to them. And they never could have predicted just how pure Jude’s soul would be. When Reth unwittingly commits a sin against Lucifer, they’ll need Jude’s help to avoid an eternity of suffering… For them both.

This story was a mixed bag for me.  Some of it I liked a lot but some parts didn’t work for me.  I loved the concept of the story and all of the paranormal characters that were in it.  I thought it was a really unique idea for a book and the plot drew me in right away.  One of my issues though came up right away and that was that Reth was supposed to have no gender and therefore was referred to as “they” or “their”.  It kept confusing me and pulling me out of the story.  I would have to re-read sentences to figure out if “they” was Reth alone or Reth and Jude.  It also didn’t make a lot of sense to me plot wise because initially Reth explains that gender is just for humans but then every other paranormal creature in the story, including another succubus, are all assigned a gender and called “he” or “she”.

The biggest issue though was that I just didn’t feel any connection or love between the two MC’s.  There was a lot of telling me that they loved each other but not a lot of showing.  None of it felt believable to me.  Jude barely batted an eye to find out his boyfriend was dead and his body was now possessed by a demon.

There were a host of great side characters in this and I especially enjoyed the hellhounds.  It’s a cool world that the author has created and I’d like to see this turn into a series so we could see what happens to some of these creatures.

There were parts of this I really liked and then the above mentioned things that didn’t work for me.  Overall I would say it was a good read and I liked it well enough to check out some more works by this author.  If you’re looking for something outside the norm this would be a good pick.

Cover:  I think the cover is great.  I like it a lot and think it is perfect for the story.

Book Details:

Kindle Edition
Published October 10th 2016
ASINB01IWLJ554
Edition LanguageEnglish