The author, Naiya Bladesinger, has inverted and subverted the reverse harem cosmos and its tropes as we know them in a delightful and satisfying way. (Be warned! It’s not my normal grimdark fare. This book might make you laugh out loud—it will certainly make you smile.)
The Kitchen Is Always Open is (ironically) a clean, sweet contemporary paranormal reverse harem composed of demons, devils, and worse.
A cute, kitschy courtship story in which a reverse harem of demons and devils fall in love with a mortal woman in Seattle and proceed to solve her biggest problem against her will.
The world building is fun. The dialog is adorable. The relationships and circumstances are what you’d expect from a romcom even if most of the participants are from Hel or the Abyss. The romance, sexual tension, and heat level are what you’d expect in a teen or adult clean/sweet romance or a Jane Austen novel.
The foreshadowing of renewed conflict between Heaven and the rest of the planes sets up (presumably) the rest of the series. Looking forward to seeing angels, devils, demons, and fae break the universe in their fight over a woman who is too good to be true despite her traumatic childhood.
I’ve finally figured out what kind of books I want to recommend. They’ll mostly be on brand for me (grimdark). They’ll all be fantasy (of both the constructed/second world and urban varieties). And they’ll all be authors you’ve never heard of. Because Jim Butcher, Joe Abercrombie, Larry Correia, and Faith Hunter don’t need me to promote them. But indies like me who’re just getting started deserve much more love and attention, because it’s harder for them to get started and harder to finish their books. The world needs more stories and more diversity in its stories than dino pub in New York could ever produce.
If you’d like a free read of that sort, the prequel to the Temple of Vengeance quadrilogy is yours for the taking, Death Descends.
