The Devil Inside: Got an overdue notice

The Devil Inside by Jenna Black

I checked out The Devil Inside from the library, read the first few chapters, and then ended up simply forgetting to pick the book up again. Eventually I got an overdue notice from the library, which often results in my either renewing the book or hurrying up and reading it before returning it. Instead, I simply took The Devil Inside back to the library without regret. It took me a while to put my finger on why I lost interest, but now I think I’ve got it.

The beginning is great. Jenna Black sets up a dark urban-fantasy world in which demons sometimes possess unwilling humans, and in which exorcists, like Black’s Morgan Kingsley, have the difficult task of casting them out. A “successful” exorcism is far from a happy outcome, as the human’s psyche is severely damaged by the ordeal of possession, but a worse fate awaits if the exorcism doesn’t work. The only way to banish the demon in those cases is to burn the human alive. As the book opens, Morgan is on her way to exorcise a little girl. The fire is already prepared in case she fails. It’s a horrific situation and it gripped me completely.

After that scene, there is a sexual scene involving Morgan and her boyfriend, followed by an brief but interesting plot development. Next up is another sex scene between Morgan and the boyfriend. This is interrupted by a conversation between Morgan and her voluntarily-possessed brother. This talk is quite poignant in a way, since essentially the real brother is dead. That was as far as I read.

I think, in retrospect, that Black lost me with the sex scenes. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them per se. They’re well-written and steamy. The issue is that they’re too early in the story. The sex scenes sort of throw me out of the dark atmosphere Black set with the first chapter. They also seem oddly impersonal, because we barely know Morgan and don’t know her boyfriend at all. I find that sex scenes work better when I’ve been given a reason to care about the people involved and about their relationship. Black might have done better to include a few more chapters of world-building and character development before heading below the belt.