Review – Demon Born

Demon Born book cover

Title:

Demon Born

Series:

Hellfire Academy #1

Author:

C. L. Coffey

Genre:

Urban Fantasy

Blurb:

She spent her life running from them. Now she’s going to school with them.
For as long as she could remember, Kennedy’s mother had called her a demon, but she’d never believed her; her mother was ill. And then the Archangel Gabriel appeared trying to kill her. When divine intervention steps in, Kennedy finds herself whisked away to Greenwood Preparatory University.
Hellfire Academy, as the students call it, is home to nephilim like her. To the outside world it’s an exclusive college. To some of the student body, it’s a training academy—and one of the professors is Gabriel. Kennedy has the year to prove that she can stay out of trouble, which would be easy to do if she wasn’t getting distracted by an archangel.
When Kennedy’s roommate has a vision that the college will be attacked, it’s up to Kennedy to stop that from happening. Only it’s hard to know who to trust when you’re the one everyone thinks is evil.

Review

3stars rating
INTRO:

Demon Born is the first book I read by the author and while there were certain parts in the story I really liked, I don’t think this is for me 🙁

Worldbuilding:

Was good. The author describes all scenes and environments very clearly and detailed. We quickly find out what’s the deal between the (arch)angels and the Fallen (and the nephilim) and so the story starts off with a bang.

Character development:

Was decent. Kennedy gets thrown into a whole new setting, very strict rules and people that pretty much hate her guts so yeah, saying she had it rough was an understatement. She has a lot of fight in her and is not easily beaten down. But… she was the sole person looking after her mother, how could she just leave her behind? I would at least demand to say goodbye myself etc… but that might just be me.
I liked Gabriel, he has changed a lot during the course of the book at least. I do wonder though why he took it upon himself to watch over Kennedy. We didn’t really get much information about him, unfortunately.
Leigh-Ann and Ty were both good additions to the story, with sufficient depth.

Pacing & Flow:

Were decent. As I’ve said before, it started with a bang, then slowed to a crawl before finally picking up the pace in the last few chapters. While the middle part was of course essential for the story to come to its full potential, I just felt it dragged on too long without anything to get the blood pumping again.

The book itself:

The book itself was well written with no (noticeable) errors and there was no sex described (if that is important to you).

Final Thoughts:

I voluntarily read an advanced reader copy of this book and all in all the plot was good and has potential, but unfortunately, I struggled a lot with some decisions made by the characters and with the flow in the middle. Will I be reading future books in this series? At the moment I don’t think so, but who knows!