THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

Author: Jenna Black ISBN: 9780553590456 8/2008 PARANORMAL Publisher: DELL SPECTRA

The beautiful. The bad. The possessed. Some people worship them. Some people fear them. And some people—like Morgan Kingsley—go up against them toe-to-toe, flesh to flesh, and power against power. An exorcist by trade, Morgan is one of the few humans with an aura stronger than her possessor, even though her demon can tease her body senseless. She’s also a woman who has just discovered a shocking truth: everything she once believed about her past, her identity, may have been a lie. With a family secret exploding around her and a full-scale demon war igniting, Morgan is a key player in an unsettled world. Then a rogue sociopathic demon enters her life with a bang. His name is The Hunter. And since she is the prey, Morgan has only one choice: to hunt The Hunter down—no matter what heartbreaking truths she uncovers along the way….

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

While THE DEVIL YOU KNOW lacks the gritty, intense and desperate feel its predecessor THE DEVIL INSIDE has, it also lacks all the S&M and gratuitous raunch. For me, that is a good thing. And though I like THE DEVIL INSIDE better, finding out what Morgan Kingsley is up to is as compelling as watching a train wreck, so THE DEVIL YOU KNOW is just fine.

There are times of real interest and times of just "going to finish this chapter so I can make dinner" feelings for me on this one, but overall I enjoyed it. Sometimes the characters seem to be too mysterious and hush-hush with one another, so it is easy to feel as though they should just get on with things. There is a lot of waiting for something to happen and someone to talk going on. But, the culmination of events are surely a setup for the next book and the details of the past have to be filled in sometime, I guess.

Anyway, though not as interesting or engaging as its mother, THE DEVIL YOU KNOW does a decent job of keeping Morgan's story alive and contains the hook I need to get me to want to review the next book.

Shannon Johnson