A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley – Review

Published: November 28, 2023

Publisher: Berkeley

Series: Glimmer Falls #2

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

Pages: 336 (Kindle)

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Calladia Cunnington curses the day she met Astaroth the demon, but when he shows up memoryless, why does she find him so helpless . . . and sort of hot?

Calladia Cunnington knows she’s rough around the edges, despite being the heir to one of small-town Glimmer Falls’ founding witch families. While her gym obsession is a great outlet for her anxieties and anger, her hot temper still gets the best of her and manifests in bar brawls. When Calladia saves someone from a demon attack one night, though, she’s happy to put her magic and rage to good use . . . until she realizes the man she saved is none other than Astaroth, the ruthless demon who orchestrated a soul bargain on her best friend.

Astaroth is a legendary soul bargainer and one of the nine members of the demon high council–except he can’t remember any of this. Suffering from amnesia after being banished to the mortal plane, Astaroth doesn’t know why a demon named Moloch is after him, nor why the muscular, angry, hot-in-a-terrifying-way witch who saved him hates him so much.

Unable to leave anyone in such a vulnerable state–even the most despicable demon–Calladia grudgingly decides to help him. (Besides, punching an amnesiac would be in poor taste.) The two set out on an uneasy road trip to find the witch who might be able to restore Astaroth’s memory so they can learn how to defeat Moloch. Calladia vows that once Astaroth is cured, she’ll kick his ass, but the more time she spends with the snarky yet utterly charming demon, the more she realizes she likes this new, improved Astaroth . . . and maybe she doesn’t want him to recover his memories, after all.

---

I had a terribly fun time with the first book in this series, A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon, so obviously I wanted to see what would happen between two of the characters we first met in that book! Calladia is a fit, aggressive, and beautiful woman who never seems to live up to her mother’s expectations while Astaroth is a powerful demon who just got kicked off the high council thanks to a poorly placed bet. Oh, did I mention that last time he met Calladia she blasted him practically into next week?

Well, thanks to Astaroth’s poorly placed bet, he winds up losing much of his memory and Calladia saves him against her better judgment. She agrees to help him try to get his memory back and she wants revenge against Astaroth’s demon rival who incinerated her home. The two set off on quite the journey and, as generally happens in a romance book, they fall for one another pretty hard. It was sweet and fun and I loved that Calladia isn’t some petite flower that needs to be saved. She’s out there starting brawls with werewolves because she thinks it’s fun and can hold her own!

I like the setting, as it’s a modern day version of our world, but with an abundance of magic and different magic users and supernatural creatures. It’s a little light on worldbuilding, but the primary focus is the characters and the relationships forming, so despite that it doesn’t bother me much. Some of the dialogue is cheesy as hell and I think the ‘villain’ characters lean so hard into their particular traits (overbearing mother, vengeful demon) that it becomes a caricature. 

Overall, I had a good time with this and it ultimately met my expectations. If you read the first book and want more of this world and to see how Calladia and Astaroth get together, I think you’ll find this just as enjoyable as I did. I find myself hoping there will be another book in the series focusing on either the gardener werewolf or the bubbly social media star pixie!