Book 1 in the Devour Me series Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 | 📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Devour Me yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
OPENING HOOK
I went into Devour Me with zero expectations and came out the other side needing to talk to someone about it immediately. A throuple with a wraith bound to an evil witch? I didn’t have that on my list for this year.
THE FULL STORY — SPOILERS INCLUDED
So Birdie’s a PhD student studying archival history, and her whole summer plan implodes when she loses her funding. No funding means no housing, and that’s not a small problem for her. She aged out of the foster system after being adopted into a religiously abusive family and running away at sixteen with literally everything she owned. This girl has been on her own a long time, and she’s used to solving problems, but this is a big one.
Enter Phoebe, her best friend, who’s heading to Germany and conveniently has an uncle with a witchy little shop called Salt & Sage on Burr Island with teas, crystals, tarot, the whole aesthetic, that comes with an apartment above it. Birdie’s hesitant at first, but “free apartment” solves half her problems. And it turns out the same professor who cut her funding also hooked her up with a position helping with an aexcavation dig on Burr Island, so suddenly her whole summer lines up almost too perfectly.
She gets to the island, meets Jasper, and there’s an instant pull between them that neither of them can really explain. Pickles the not-quite-a-cat who lives in and around the shop and doesn’t like anybody, takes to Birdie immediately, and between Pickles’ approval, Birdie’s begging, and Phoebe’s convincing, Jasper lets her stay on to work and live there.
The action kickc off right away, because that night Birdie hears something in the alley below her window and watches Jasper get attacked. That’s how we meet Dáinn, a wraith bound in servitude to an evil witch named Ludmilla Latchko, sent by her to kill Jasper. Jasper isn’t just some guy, he’s the high priest of a centuries-old coven on the island, and Ludmilla wants him dead so she can continue the archaeological dig that everyone is opposing. That dig is in search of the burial site of the original five settler families that Jasper’s descends from, and Ludmilla is after the grimoires she thinks are buried with them.
Here’s where it gets good: Birdie, with zero context for any of this, commands Dáinn to stop. And he does. In a hundred and seventy-two years of servitude to Ludmilla and the centuries before, nothing has ever stopped him mid-feed before. Turns out what Birdie did didn’t just save Jasper’s life, she broke Dáinn out of Ludmilla’s cycle. Normally she sends him to haunt a target, report back, then she gives him a soul to eat before caging him again. Birdie interrupting that loop means Dáinn’s been quietly free to move on his own ever since, all while Ludmilla still thinks he’s locked up.
The three of them end up in this careful, unsteady alliance with Birdie learning the supernatural exists in real time, Dáinn figuring out what he can do to kill Ludmilla without the cycle controlling him, and Jasper trying to keep the coven’s secrets from unraveling while an ancient evil witch closes in. And underneath all of it, there’s this pull between all three of them that nobody can quite name. Mates has been looked into, but nobody’s ever heard of three people being mated together like this, especially between a witch, a wraith, and a human.
We also get Jasper’s backstory with his mother, the previous head of the coven, who spent decades making him feel like a disappointment because he was more powerful than her and she couldn’t stand it. Dáinn’s got nearly two hundred years of starvation and servitude under Ludmilla. Birdie’s got the foster system and religious trauma. Three broken people are learning how to trust and depend on each other.
By the end of book one, they’re racing to find the grimoires before Ludmilla does, all while trying to keep her ravens (her spies) from reporting back that Dáinn’s gone rogue and the three of them are working together. As we get to the end of the book, everything blows up: Phoebe gets kidnapped, Dáinn ends up trapped with her as Ludmilla realizes he’s no longer fully bound to her will, Jasper’s off trying to save Frankie (his childhood best friend, closest to him in age) who nearly died saving Birdie and now thinks Dáinn sold them all out. And in the middle of that chaos, Birdie invites Basil (Baz) Barnes, an extremely untrustworthy mage, onto Burr Island soil, where the wards have kept magical beings and those who intend harm out for centuries… That’s the current state of affairs as we close the book.
BEST PART OF THIS BOOK
The dynamic between Dáinn, Jasper, and Birdie. All three of them are a little broken, and they’re drawn to each other in a way none of them understand yet. That slow, uncertain pull between three people who don’t have a name for what they are to each other but can’t resist. That’s the heart of this book, and it’s just as important as the big plot line running alongside.
WORST PART OF THIS BOOK
Honestly, nothing stands out as a real complaint. If I’m nitpicking, some of the spicier scenes felt like they swing in their mindset pretty fast Birdie goes from hesitant and unsure with Dáinn to fully dominant and all-in as one example, and that shift caught me off guard a couple of times. But that’s a minor thing in an otherwise excellent read and since I’m not the best with emotions, it could have been less jarring for others than it felt for me.
THE STEAM RATING BREAKDOWN
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Yes, there are sex scenes, and they’re delightfully explicit. The romance is central to the plot here, this isn’t a subplot, it’s woven directly into who these three characters are becoming to each other. Content-wise, there’s religious trauma and abandonment themes tied to Birdie’s backstory, so go in aware of that.
THE ENDING — SATISFIED OR DISAPPOINTED?
Satisfied. It’s a cliffhanger, but a good one; everything that’s been building finally boils over at once. Phoebe’s kidnapped, Dáinn’s trapped with her, Jasper’s racing to save Frankie who thinks Dáinn betrayed them, and Birdie just let an untrustworthy mage past wards that have held for centuries. Book two has a lot to work with.
THE TWIST WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
Dáinn being free of Ludmilla’s cycle happens early, so that’s not really the twist. What I didn’t see coming was where the story seems to be heading with Birdie. The coven has never in its history brought in an outside member (spouses aren’t even made members), so whatever she turns out to be, it’s going to be interesting for their relationship as well as the coven as a whole.
THE CHARACTER WE LOVED TO HATE
Ludmilla Latchko, no contest. She’s evil and deserves all she has coming to her. Jasper’s mom is a close second here and the jury is still out on Baz.
THE MOMENT WE SCREAMED AT THE BOOK
Every single time the three of them gave in to the pull between them, I did a full chair-wiggle dance. You could feeeeel the tension and the pull.
THE HOT TAKE
I think Birdie is going to turn out to be descended from that fifth original witch bloodline that supposedly died out centuries ago, mixed with something else entirely.
WOULD WE REREAD IT?
Absolutely, one day.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Anyone who loves a paranormal why-choose romance with real action behind it and genuinely great characters, even the supporting characters shined.
WHERE TO GET THIS BOOK
📖 Physical Book Amazon | Bookshop.org
🎧 Audiobook Audible | Libro.fm
📱 Ebook Amazon Kindle
🎁 New to Audible? Get 3 months free (US) 🎁 New to Libro.fm? Get 2 free audiobooks
📚 More from the Devour Me series Book 1 — Devour Me | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 5/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 — [Read the Review] Book 2 — Coming Soon
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥 📖 | Series: Devour Me Book 1 | Genre: Paranormal Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥