Book Review: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

 

Toward the end of February, I purchased an e-book copy of That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming because I was in a reading slump and many of the people in my reading network were touting it about as a really sweet, funny, cozy fantasy-romance book and that sounded like it might help me renew my interest in reading. Suffice to say, I probably should have done a bit more research before going into this one, because it definitely made my reading slump worse. 

Per usual, I can't rate a book I didn't finish reading, but let's talk about the reasons I put it down. 

Rating: DNF

The copy I have reviewed below is no longer available for purchase.

Blurb from Amazon:

"All I wanted to do was live my life in peace. Maybe get a cat, expand my spice farm. Really anything that doesn’t involve going on a quest where an orc might rip my face off. 

But they say the Goddess has favorites. If so, I’m clearly not one of them.

After saving the demon Fallon in a wine-drunk stupor, all he wanted to do was kill an evil witch enslaving his people.

I mean, I get it, don't get me wrong—but he's dragging me along for the ride, and I'm kind of peeved about it. On the bright side, he keeps burning off his shirt." 

Review:

NOTE: This review contains mild SPOILERS for That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon.

I made it a grand total of nine-point-eight percent of the way into That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon before decided that it was in my best interest to set this book aside.

The first thing that stood out to me in this book was the distinct clash between the setting (something akin to medieval) and the language, which frequently used modern slang. This was a stylistic choice and I think it was intended to be part of the humor, but I was pulled out of the story every single time the main character, Cinnamon, said something like:

 "I don’t know man, seems kind of suss." 

(Which, yes, that's actually a quote from the book using the wrong form of suss for what it is attempting to articulate. We'll get to that.) This is just a personal preference of mine and I acknowledge that. I had hoped that I would become acclimated to it, but it didn't matter in the end.

The second—and arguably more relevant—thing that caught my attention was how the plot progressed from setting the scene to the first main plot point. In short, Cinnamon's best friend, Brie, tries to send Cinnamon home from her shop. An explosion happens. Brie worries because it was so close to Cinnamon's home and because it might be demons. And, in the next breath, Brie encourages Cinnamon to go home, again, because Cinnamon is too drunk and looks tired—her concern vanishing in favor of plot convenience. This sort of thing generally puts me off of books, but it occurs four percent of the way into this one and I thought I was probably being too judgmental, so I decided to push onward, anyway. 

There were also a handful of other, smaller problems scattered throughout the first part of the book, such as flat characters (They may develop later.). I'm not going to illuminate them all here for the sake of space, but they were present and ranged from weird to annoying. 

And last, but certainly not least, this novel is riddled with errors. There were typos, like that seen in the quote above. Dialogue tags, more often than not, had the wrong punctuation. There were places where punctuation was missing entirely. There were tense errors. And there were lowercase letters where there ought to have been uppercase letters, and likewise the other way around. I stopped counting at forty-two errors, but there were more beyond that point. In short, it could have used at least one more pass through by an editor before being published. 

In the end, the lack of proper editing is what drove me to drop this book (though, the other things I mentioned were not doing it any favors). When I pay for a something, I expect to receive a certain quality of material. This novel didn't deliver on that front. 

There might be really sound scenes later in this book. Perhaps the characters become more likeable. Maybe the plot firms up into something that doesn't feel forced. I couldn't say. It might be worth while for you to pick this book up if the cover blurb makes it sound like your perfect cup of tea. Don't let anyone else turn you away from a potential new favorite. It just wasn't for me. 

(This has nothing to do with the writing and does not impact my opinion in any way, but this cover really is quite cute and is at least partially responsible for my decision to choose this book over other options.)

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You may have noticed that there is no link to buy this book in this post. I finished writing this review some time ago, but I didn't post it immediately because I needed to renew the links on this blog. However, when I went to get the one for this post, the copy that I bought was listed as "Out of Print" by Amazon. 

There is another e-book version of That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon listed. It has no cover and is offering me the opportunity to preorder this book, which I still own a copy of, and have it delivered to my device on May 23rd, 2023. 

I'm not sure what is going on with this, but since I can't link you to the copy I had, I am deviating from my standard practice and not linking out at all. Sorry for the inconvenience.