I saw Emmalita’s positive review of this and decided to pick it up — I’d never read anything by Chace Verity and it’s been a while since I read any romance outside of fanfic, so this was a bit of a random read. But it was very sweet and cozy, which is the type of book I was in the mood for. I breezed through it and enjoyed it.
Match With the Demon follows Harrison, a single dad whose son Justin just left for college. Harrison is feeling intense empty nest angst and decides to try using a dating app for the first time. He’s never actually dated another man before because his family was homophobic and he tried to do what everyone else wanted his whole life. On his first date he meets Lazlo, who turns out to be a retired pleasure demon who’s now into trash. I liked the somewhat random nature of this and the spin on the trope of meeting a pleasure demon — Harrison spends a lot of the book worrying that since Lazlo is retired, he might not want to have sex anymore.
How the book traced Harrison’s character arc as he becomes more settled in his own skin and more confident in his choices was nice to see, and I did like the central romance a lot. I think my main issue is the repetition of certain words and phrases that made it seem unedited, or very lightly edited — stuff like someone being called “the eighteen year old” over and over will bother me. A good line edit could have cleaned that up, but I get that hiring an editor is expensive when you’re self-publishing.
Overall, it was a sweet queer joy type romance and lived up to the positive reviews!
Warnings for: past homophobia by family, fear of current homophobia, slight “sex or die” trope, smoking, drinking, explicit sex scenes. The author included warnings at the beginning, which I appreciated!
