DANCING WITH THE DEVIL

Author: Laura Drewry ISBN: 9780843960495 12/2008 HISTORICAL Publisher: DORCHESTER
Time Period: 1880's West

HELL HATH NO FURY… Deacon knew Rhea wouldn’t exactly be happy to see him again. But he didn’t think she’d shoot him. Right in the shoulder, no less. He’d experienced worse pain in his life, though. Besides, now Rhea would have to let him stay until she could nurse him back to health. Oh, the hardship. LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED His convalescence would give Deacon a chance to convince Rhea he’d turned over a new leaf, that he was no longer the son-of-a-devil who up and left her all those years ago in a puff of sulfurous smoke. Now he’s a man who knows what he wants. And no matter what kind of trouble Rhea has gotten into while he was away, what he wants more than anything is to win her heart.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Leave it up to a man—or manlike demon, and in this case the son of the Devil—to have the best of intentions but get it all wrong in the execution. That's what Deacon does in Laura Drewry's DANCING WITH THE DEVIL, the second book two-stepping in after THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER, which featured Deacon's sister, Lucille. In between these books, it looks like Deacon's taken one heck of a beating—literally—from his Devil of a father, but his sparkling humor, devilish wit and nearly manic concern for stylish dressing have remained firmly intact.

This time around, there's not much paranormal going on as Deacon's been stripped of his powers. He attributes his feelings toward Rhea, the girl he has this "thingy" for, to the loss of those powers, and somehow he and Rhea have become inexplicably interlinked: he feels what she feels and vice versa. His goal is to make her unlove him by being nice to her, so that she can unlock her heart and go love someone else. Weird logic, I know, but how typically male. However, his plan almost never commences because 1) Rhea shoots Deacon on sight, since 2) she knows who, or rather what, he is, and 3) she thought he was dead and has been masquerading as his long suffering widow in order to regain her reputation. Only one missing item here: there's no marriage certificate because she couldn't marry a dead man... er, son of the Devil. So, what on earth do they do to keep ruining her and making her humiliation complete?

Once again, Laura Drewry writes a fun story with lots of wit and a devilish Deacon you can't help but find delight in. Long suffering Rhea, humiliated and trying to make a go of her deceased parents' store, doesn't succumb to Deacon and his twisted logic so easily, giving him a run for his silk suits. And just as last time around there's plenty of quirky townsfolk popping in and out, as well as Deacon's other sister, Kit, who does her own kind of fading in and out of the pages. Hey, sometimes harassing one sibling can come back to bite you from another, as Deacon soon discover when he ends up with a dose of his own medicine.

Overall, I didn't find DANCING WITH THE DEVIL quite as spunky and fun as its predecessor, but it still turned out to be quite an enjoyable and well-written read.

Nancy Davis