Succubus in the city
Nina Harper
Reviewer: Analiese Jackson
Rating: 2.5/5
It’s hard for the average woman to find true love in New York. What makes it harder is when you’re thousands of years old and predestined to incinerate men once you sleep with them. Lily and her three close female friends are living the high life in New York City. With fabulous shoes and killer bodies, they seem to have it all. There’s only one small catch: these four fabulous (immortal) women are foot soldiers of Satan (who, by the way, is a woman named Martha). Lily’s job as a succubus is to, using her feminine wiles, lure dodgy men into bed with her so that she can steal their souls and send them to eternal damnation (apparently they burst into ashes the moment that they are satisfied…yup), thus ridding the city of pricks and losers. When sexy P.I Nathan Cole turns up on her doorstep asking if she would know anything about the disappearance of a man, Lily starts to worry that her life (living the high life in the afterlife, as it were) as she knows it is about to unravel …
Chick lit can typically be put on a sliding scale from the trashy (yes, I’m talking to you, Mills and Boon) to those that are absolutely incredibly written and somewhat life changing, like those that are authored by one of my literary idols, Marian Keyes. Succubus in the City, with both its title and general storyline pilfered from Sex and the City, sits somewhat comfortably in the middle of this aforementioned spectrum: it’s sharply written, but the entire premise of the book makes it thoroughly unbelievable and hard to engage with.
When reviewing a book like this, you’ve got to realise that it’s targeted towards young women in their twenties who aspire to be beautiful, rich, successful and lucky in love. Reading books such as this one can be a form of living vicariously for many women who don’t have the time or money to peruse the lifestyles lived by the heroines of romance novels. Having said this, Succubus in the City ticks is a relatively engaging read and ticks all the boxes in terms of fulfilling what is required from the genre. It’s the type of book that I’d recommend you get out of the library on a rainy afternoon