#TWRBlogTour: Devil’s Deal – Tessa Hastjarjanto

“When two angels break their deal with the devil, he comes for the one thing they’re trying to protect.

All 16-year-old Nora wants is to graduate high school and visit her family in Italy. But when two boys transfer to her class, everything changes.

Danny steals her friends, Ben her first kiss.

When Nora finds out the boys are not who they claim to be, she faces a difficult choice.

Will she give her love or her life?”

The blurb is the first thing that got me interested in this book. A teenage girl and two hot new boys in her class sounds like the epitome of the perfect YA read. The idea of the devil getting involved sounded super interesting to me too, especially because the story itself takes place mostly in the “real world”.

Nora is a solid and interesting main character. She is very likeable, yet there come some flaws with her character too. Right from the beginning, she seems very scared of boys / men she comes across on the street. She has this kind of underlying paranoia that they all want her and want to hurt her somehow, which I didn’t really understand. There was one scene in the beginning for example where she comes across a group of young men and basically imagines one of them touching her. Even though I can definitely see the general aspect of being scared in such a situation as a woman, let alone teenage girl, alone on the streets, it was a bit too much I think. Overall Nora seems like a pretty normal teenage girl living a normal life, with the same school, family and friends problems everyone that age knows about.

Her friends weren’t all that likeable in my opinion, but they fulfilled the roles that friends in many teenage stories often play, so they seemed natural, if not that realistic. Some of them got more likeable as the story progressed though. Interestingly, I felt that them lacking maturity was counterbalanced by Danny and Ben, the new boys in school, and Nora. However, their way of talking often seemed a bit too grown-up to me – so much so that it came across as unnatural sometimes.

Most of these issues made the beginning of the book a bit harder for me to get into, but  the ending got stronger – so much so that I might be interested in the sequels!

Unfortunately, I stumbled upon some editorial errors that could have been avoided. Mostly typos, missing or wrongly placed commas and the use of the wrong tense, which took away from my reading joy a bit I have to admit.

Overall I can say that behind this book lies a very creative idea with lots of potential. The few issues I had with it had me downgrade it to 3 stars, but with some tweaks and changes here and there, it has potential for more!

It was amazing for me to see a book blogger taking the plunge and publishing a book herself. I can’t wait to see what the next instalments will bring, and if maybe the slight negative points I noticed will take a more positive turn! 

3 stars from me.

Thanks a lot to Tessa Hastjarjanto and The Write Reads for letting me take part in the blog tour. I received this book for free from The Write Reads in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

About the author

Tessa Hastjarjanto is a Dutch/Indonesian writer from the Netherlands. She writes speculative fiction and blogs at narratess.com about books, fountain pens, and writing.
From a young age, she imitated popular stories and games in creating her own worlds. This love eventually led to a master’s degree in media and game studies at the University of Utrecht. However, a mundane desk job was enough to inspire her to follow her creative passion. The first fanfics were written in lunch breaks and soon, original fiction followed. With the support of her husband, she now focuses on her writing career while battling chronic pain. Her Swiss white shepherd, Shiro, acts as a therapy dog to keep her healthy and reduce stress through extensive cuddle sessions.

Buy the book on Amazon!