Hi Forever Bookers,
How are you all? I hope you’re good!
I’ve just finished “Satan’s Affair” by HD Carlton and I loved it! I buddy read it with a Facebook friend. She enjoyed it too.
We follow Sibby who features in “Haunting Adeline.” She’s abused by her father as a child, which we get flashbacks to in Satan’s Affair. Otherwise the novella details how she gets on in life as an adult (in her twenties). She murders for a living as well as having lots of sex with men from the carnival. She calls them her “henchmen.” The novella is heartbreaking at the end too.
I read Satan’s Affair for one readathon:
Reading Rivalry - Horror - although Satan’s Affair isn’t horror in a lot of ways. There are lots of murders and torturous scenes that are described in detail. I class that as a form of horror!
Trigger warning: There are LOTS of distressing scenes of torture and sexual abuse is brought up in Satan’s Affair, as well as generic sex scenes.
Spoilers Below
“One” Stab. A grunt punctures my next word. “Two” Stab. Another grunt. “Freddy’s coming for you,” I sing, high-pitched and child like. Blood spurts from his stab wound painting my face in a mosaic of red and gore.
The evil is seeping out of each hole I’ve made in his body. I can feel it, curling from the openings like smoke from the machines in nearly every corner of this house. I breathe in deep, smelling the evil coming out of him.
It smells like rotten egg and brimstone. It’s how I know that I made the right judgement. “Morris, come hold his head,” I order. My henchman listens immediately, gripping the man’s head in his cold hands, rendering him still as his black talons dig into the demon’s face. His efforts to dislodge his head from Morris’s grip are so cute.
Gripping my pretty knife in my hand, I lean down closely and start working the pointed tip around the edge of the man’s eyeball. It’s my favourite knife. The handle is bright pink and swirls at the end. I’ve had this knife since I was a little girl, it’s the only thing left I have of my mother’s.”
These are the first paragraphs of “Satan’s Affair.” The novella is about Sibby, a girl who kills ‘evil’ or what she deems as evil men that abuse and are horrible because of her past with her abusive father. Sibby acts like a child throughout “Satan’s Affair.” She doesn’t know her age, however, although she suspects she’s in her twenties.
“Daddy smelled like rotten eggs. So did a lot of people in our Church, draining him of his nectar. But I didn’t understand that I was shown these things for a purpose—to eradicate these demons.”
Sibby defines ‘evil’ as men who smell bad because that’s how her evil, abusive father smelled. She tells us of her past. She was brought up in a church or religious cult. Her father expected sex as payment for saving people’s souls from demons. That’s how he ended up with so many children. We don’t meet any of his other children but Sibby tells us of her siblings and how they didn’t save her from her father because they were scared of him too.
“…they’re used to leaving me to stand alone.”
I thought this was very sad. You’d think that Sibby’s siblings would care to be rid of their evil father too, but of course the story is told from Sibby’s point of view, so that’s why I believe the text is solely focused on Sibby’s experiences. It would have been interesting to have these scenes from a brother/sister of Sibby’s. We meet Sibby’s mother or Mommy, as she calls her. She’s also abused by Sibby’s father.
“She turned to nothing but skin and bones, an empty shell of a woman who had little left in her but her aching soul.
Mommy smelled like black roses. Daddy tainted her, and her petals started to wilt and decay.
I lost her when I didn’t have to. If she would have removed us from that evil Church with an even worse dictator, we could’ve had a happy life.” This is how Sibby sees her mother. She loved her but she wished she had more determination to remove her and Sibby from the church. That way they might have had a life! The black roses scent of her mother wasn’t her mother’s fault. It was her deranged father’s.
The parts that I really enjoyed in Satan’s Affair were the sex scenes. Sibby has five henchmen at the carnival, Satan’s Affair. These characters come up a lot in the novella. They’re how Sibby copes through her troubles. They try to help Sibby get through her woes and help her succeed in her killings. The killings are quite graphic as is the sex. Both of which are shown below.
“Gary looses his breath, hunching over from the pain. And just like that, Jackal brings his fist down on the back of Gary’s head, knocking him out cold.
Gary slackens, his hunched body falling forward and crashing face-first to the dirty ground. I laugh when his body settles into a position where he’s awkwardly on his knees, with his arms in the air and his face on the ground.
With excited giggles, I find my little entrance and crawl through. The doors are only three feet tall. It’s a little awkward to drag the demons through, but I usually don’t have too much trouble.
Once I’m inside the room, I run up to Jackal, grab his face and bring him down to my level. I brush my lips against his softly, before deepening the kiss and plunging my tongue in his mouth. This time, I don’t mind the fake, nasty blood on his mouth. Jackal groans, licking at my mouth eagerly. His cock hardens in his trousers, pressing against my stomach, the entirety of his body molding to mine.
Gary is an ‘evil’ man, who in Sibby’s mind abused his girlfriend, Jennifer who also works at the carnival. I really enjoyed reading Gary’s demise, even though I’m not sure he deserved it. Did he deserve to be killed? You’ll need to read for yourself!
There’s a character that features in Haunting Adeline. Does Zade help Sibby? How? You’ll need to read for yourself!
Overall then, I really enjoyed Satan’s Affair! It was a surprise HOW much I liked it. It’s not my new favourite book or anything but it was very captivating to read. I’m currently reading Haunting Adeline, which is book 1 in the main duology. There is a cliffhanger sort of ending to Satan’s Affair, but there’s no book 2 yet. Hopefully there will be at some point!
Stand by for my next review, coming soon!
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