My Boyfriend Satan
Leah Campbell
North Street Book Prize 2024 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Genre Fiction
Critique by Jendi Reiter
Leah Campbell's paranormal romance My Boyfriend Satan offers two of the things I most enjoy in a novel: anti-authoritarian theology and long, juicy sex scenes. Put those together and you get something more than fan service for us monster-lovers. This bold story is a timely salvo against those who would cleave the spiritual from the erotic. Self-knowledge, consent, and desire are our personal sacred powers that high-control religions try to steal for themselves.
At 33, our heroine, Gwen Lenoir, has dated a rogue's gallery of pretentious and brainless men in Santa Cruz. She's saving her virginity (defined rather technically as penis- or vibrator-in-vagina sex) for true love that she fears may never arrive. She's functioning on top of severe religious trauma, as her parents coped with her brother's early death by joining a cultish church that condemned all secular media. She'd love to write books along the lines of her beloved rom-coms, but lacks the confidence to share her manuscripts.
All her troubles seem to find their solution in a mysterious new occult emporium whose gorgeous owner, Gunner, sells her a book titled God's Penance, then has hot phone sex with her. However, when she performs a love spell from the book, she accidentally summons an even hotter (in all senses of the word) rival for Gunner's affections, a seriously well-endowed red giant who turns out to be Satan himself. And he's a total cinnamon roll.
Meanwhile, Gunner is using the trappings of sweet romance and angelic purity to gaslight and control Gwen. He seems to know too many of her secrets for an ordinary shop owner who just moved into the neighborhood. Their love triangle with Satan is revealed to be a crucial battle in the cosmic war between divine control and Promethean free will. Think William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell crossed with Disney's Beauty and the Beast but with a 30-page scene of Belle getting eaten out. This book is not shy.
My Boyfriend Satan would have advanced further in the contest if not for the sloppy editing. There were a lot of typos and misused words: e.g. "sleuth" for "slew", "pecks" for "pecs", "snuggly" for "snugly", and our old enemy "it's" versus "its". I can only conclude that we editors are all so virtuous that Satan has no proofreaders to assist him in Hell.
The cover design was completely on-trend for today's romance novels, with a cute handwriting font and a sensual, playful illustration of Gwen and Satan against a Barbie-pink background. The interior font was large and readable, and the page layout looked professional.
In conclusion, this book made me feel brave and horny. Go thou and do likewise.
Read an excerpt from My Boyfriend Satan (PDF)
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