Review: Mesmerising
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
I tend to stick to authors I like and Demelza Carlton is one of them. I won’t be happy until I’ve read everything she has produced. There is something so skilful about the way she writes, which is at the same time raw and humorous. Mel is my kind of girl. I entered the novel thinking that the job interview scenario was real, forgetting that the title was ‘Welcome to Hell,’ and was lured into this peculiar world like a lamb to the slaughter. The presence of horns and tails on the interviewing panel was genius but took me by surprise.I was disappointed when the last page came and went and wanted more. I’ve already bought the next installment. Even though I knew that the work was a short story before I began reading, the characterisation was amazing. Mel is plucky, brave, unfazed by the bizarre presence of demons at her job interview and also immensely entertaining. I read the ‘briefcase up the bum’ incident on Demelza Carlton’s blog and still smiled reading it again in the book.Lucifer already reminds me of a manager I once had, all powerful, slightly menacing and incredibly lecherous. I can’t wait to see what antics he gets up to. There is something about the way that Demelza Carlton writes that is so subtly tongue in cheek; it gets me every time. It doesn’t seem to matter what sort of emotion the scene demands, she manages to make the reader dance to the author’s tune effortlessly.I’ve never read a series about angels and demons portrayed in this way. It’s really different. The word ‘black comedy’ springs to mind but as always, Carlton is in a league of her own, carving out her own route and mesmerising the reader with her colourful, well-drawn characterisation. Demelza Carlton is a craftswoman, a literary hypnotist and I am condemned to sinking my precious time and hard-earned cash willingly into another of her addictive series.