First off, this is a side story that goes in-depth on two main secondary characters of the two main series "Afterlife" and "Whatever Lucian and Amelia’s Series is Named". It is a “Beauty and the Beast” type of retelling.

For veteran readers of Stephanie Hudson, let me say this. This is a DUET and no longer. No cliffhangers beyond this book, it is done in the second. YAY. Although she does do that soft scene break cliffhanger italicized sentence that got tiresome.

I am not going to rehash old complaints about the two main series because that has no bearing on this book. If you are interested, check them out. I must say one thing though, both of the series are done so the cliffhanger problem is solved. Also, this book doesn't rely on you knowing ANYTHING about the previous series so you can go in blind and still enjoy it. There is enough backstory and character descriptions that you won't get lost.

Now if you haven't read any other books by Stephanie Hudson, or stopped midway or maybe decided early on it wasn't for you for reasons beyond just the story then give this a try. It's short and has a fun story about how Pip and Adam fell in love. Hopefully you read enough to have met them seeing as how they showed up in book 3? - I think Book 3.

Pip is a shadow imp who is a character that has the personality of which you have never met. She is EXTRA. She may be centuries old, but she is a very young at heart type of character who would never hurt anyone but is down for all kinds of fun. She has a very eclectic sense of style and way of speaking and relating with others, but in the end, she is just being true to herself and hurts no one intentionally. I know that this is almost vague, but you have to read the book to understand. Think a grown-up version of Punky Brewster who likes to mix goth and 1980’s cartoons with cat tail butt plugs. Although this is about her and her husband Adam, he isn’t really in this book at all, he might show up in the next one, but this one is about the first half of their “courtship”.

This first book in the duet starts off with Pip playing with a 3-year-old Amelia, the daughter of the main characters of the first series "Afterlife" and the future heroine/love interest of the second series. However, we are in this bubble of time where it's an ordinary day at Afterlife and Pip is hanging out with Amelia when all of a sudden there is some otherworldly wall-shaking yelling going on and Pip realizes that Adam just discovered the joke she played on him.

Pip is married to a wonderful nerdy/geek-sheik man named Adam, and we don't know too much about what is going on other than he "almost lost control". Pip playing a joke on Adam as she normally does is just par for the course so she really wasn’t expecting anything other than her normal "punishments" that end up with her enjoying them too much. However, Adam needs to get away for a minute because he was really scared about how close he lost control over "himself".
So, while Adam takes off to parts unknown, Amelia begs Pip to tell her the story of how she and Adam met. This first book is that story. We see Pip doing what it was that she did that got her sent to that place where she met that being that brought her to Adam. - Lol!

You might be lost, but this is as spoiler free as you are going to get. If you aren't lost - Congratulations!

I liked this book because Pip was a bit less "Pip" than she became towards the end of Afterlife. I liked that it fleshed out the entire origin story that we got glimpses of and bits and pieces of in previous books. It went in detail of those things we wondered about. You know...how it all "worked"...lol! Seriously? Was I the only one trying to picture Pip with a pre-Adam Abaddon? Trying to figure out how a Multiple Storied tall monster managed to fall in love with a little Pip?
Well, we get the deets here - nothing too weird or cringy, but it was definitely putting to rest my questions. The book ends to the point where Pip is sent to find a vessel to hold the Beast. Book two takes it from there.

I enjoyed it, and am currently reading the second. I am especially enjoying that it is a proper story with no cliffhangers and I expect it to be done after the second book. Together they are about 350 pages so it's not a huge time investment. They are available from Kindle Unlimited so there's that.
I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to anyone who like paranormal romance, with humor, and aren’t really afraid of a bit of sexy times lol!

However, it isn’t full of sex, it's a proper romantic paranormal fiction book. Yeah. That’s it. Since there really isn't anything but a couple of pages worth of eroticism. The rest is actual "story". That is different than the other series. So, it was refreshing to not have to wade through pages of it. ( )