Thank you Netgalley, Jay H.D. And Blue Shore books for this e-arc. In exchange, this is my honest review.

I previously recieved and read ‘cream’ by the same author and absolutely loved it! It was my first experience with horror. When I saw this ARC available, I requested it ASAP. I also really liked this one!

This book felt like watching a car crash happen: The car crash is so cruel and gruesome, but you just can’t look away. You have to know what happens. This book did that really well. There were some parts that made me feel physically sick because of how ‘horror’ they were. The descriptions of hell for example.

*spoiler* I liked what Jess revealed at the very end.

I also liked thzt Jay, the mc, did things you cannot excuse. He is a complicated character, but I could see why he did all that.

After reading Cream, I was super excited to pick up this second Jay H.D. novel, and it didn't disappoint. As horror novels go, I found this story to be original and very entertaining, and since horror is my favorite genre, it's so refreshing when I find one with gay characters and themes that are relatable and current. I think that there's a specific audience for Jay's novels, and I'm definitely a part of that group.

In Rascal, a familiar tale of being-gay-and-bullied-in-school takes a fantastical and Hellish turn, when our protagonist meets a demon and enlists him to help in his pursuits of love and of revenge. I loved the parallels in this novel with my own experiences with being picked on in school, and of the appeal to turn to something like witchcraft in order to harness (well, at first,) protection from the cruelty of our peers. The dual-perspectives of both the boy and his demon pulled me in from the beginning, and left me wanting more for the entire read. I loved the little twists, and the spicy bits were sparce, but hot. I found this story wildly entertaining. There were a few times I was confused about what decade we were in, with mentioning of things like AOL, but it didn't take away from the story or distract me from it.

In the vein of "My Best Friend's Exorcism" and "Psycho Teenage Bloodbath", Rascal is, well, just FUN. If you like twisted little occult stories like these, unabashed 80s-and-90s-syle horror, and gay sex, then you might really enjoy Rascal by Jay H.D. I'm going to give this 4.5 stars, and Jay: I can't wait for your next book!

This was a unique concept for a demon book, I thought the characters worked with the story. I thought it had a young adult feel to it and wasn’t bad to read. I could see where Jay H.D. was going on and hope they continue to write more.

DNF at 3%

The description and so repetitive writing style fell do flat I stopped right away. The synopsis is amazing, and the idea was great, but the execution didn't work for me at all.

I am sorry, but I decided to DNF this book at 58%. I, like Jay, was bullied too, for years, and I get wanting to take revenge, but this was going too far, and I draw the line at animal cruelty. I tried to push through, even though I didn't enjoy the book from the beginning, at first it was too slow, then it got too cruel, but I was waiting for it to get better. It didn't, and all those joints and alcohol and whatnot were too much for me as well. The idea was great, but the synopsis is misleading, and this book, the story, and all its characters are horribly toxic, so much so that I can't bring myself to care about how the story ends for any of them. I am sorry, but this was a big disappointment for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Victory Editing / Blue Shore Books for providing me with a free copy of this books in exchange for an honest review!

I have a lot of conflicting feelings over this book.

For the majority of this book, I had a pretty fun time! It’s not a book you should take too seriously, and the book itself is quite self aware of how campy it is. I enjoyed the time spent on earth with Jay more than Hell; I think there were absolutely some funny world building elements, but I didn’t connect with the world much since our only exposure to this world was through Rascal. None of the other characters in hell were really built up, like Zorolam, Paimon or the Devil, so there was quite a disconnect between how invested I felt in Rascal’s story outside of earth.

I did really like the character of Jay, and the dialogue was more realistic than I expected. The author claimed to have drawn from his own experience, and it was very evident. The characters were still kind of shallow, but very much less so than can be said for hell, and there were some interesting characters like Jess, Enya, Augie and even Mouse to some extent, but it felt quite surface-level. <spoiler>i did actually like Jess’ reveal towards the end. Jay was definitely pretty self-absorbed throughout the book, especially as she explains things, and Jess calling him out on that and taking him out was kind of satisfying.</spoiler>

My main gripe with this book was the ending. The story had been built up decently and I was interested in seeing how things would end up for jay, but the ending felt incredibly rushed, and Jay himself lost all agency in those last few chapters. There was definitely a disconnect between the final scene between Jay and Rascal and the epilogue, and it felt like wasted potential when the whole book had basically built up to Jay’s corruption, <spoiler>changed its mind, changed its mind again, and then killed him off, almost killed him off again, made him despise Rascal, and then suddenly everything was fine between them?</spoiler> It really felt like the book was struggling to commit one way or another, and the final showdown felt disconnected from the rest of the book.

I would say overall I did enjoy myself despite this! As I said, it’s a fun, campy ride, but it was just the ending that fell a little flat.

Was so excited about receiving this one (thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free copy) but it unfortunately disappointed. The blurb and the cover were what attracted me first but the plot fell flat, the majority of the book left me confused and that ending what even was that.

I liked that this had queer representation and the story premise sounded promising.

However I didn't relate to the writing style.
This was a soft Dnf for me.
may pick this up later

This book is BANANAS. I couldn’t tell how seriously it was taking itself— sometimes it seemed steeped in irony in such a funny way (the hardware store in Hell… the sitcom chapter…) and then other times it seemed to have absolutely no grip on the realities of storytelling. Either way, the writing was pretty abysmal and the character work VERY poor. I could picture this very vividly as an animated TV show (kind of a darker Hazbin Hotel) and I actually think the epilogue works really well. But I just could not get a grip on this. It’s truly unhinged and reminded me of some of the worst fanfiction I’ve ever read.

This book starts off weird, rectifies itself during the middle and then falls flat at the end. Rascal is 18 eons old and he's half demon and half human, but I'm pretty sure humans didn't exist EONS ago. If you let that aside, there's the whole being dead but not really after you die i.e. Rascal's mother. The ending really made no sense to me and Jay is basically and after thought. It does, however, capture teenage angst pretty well, although it fails at almost everything else. The pacing is off almost always, but it takes an even sharper turn once Rascal's realization about his love for Jay happens. The middle is the most cohesive part but not nearly as interesting nor coherent enough as to salvage the whole book.

Well that was a toxic dramatic ride.

Jay is constantly bullied by a group of boys, one of whole used to be his friend, for being openly gay. The daily torment leads him to summon a demon to help him get revenge.

Rascal, the demon summoned, is the son of the recently overthrown devil and the estranged brother to the new one. He plans to use Jay’s downfall to win back the throne of hell.

While very dark subject matter is involved in places this book is weirdly naive and innocent. It could be jarring at times.

I don’t think I’d venture to call this book ‘good’, but it was entertaining for sure.

I wanted to enjoy this book a lot more than I did, unfortunately I struggled to push myself to keep reading it.

DNF @ 20%

I'm saddened to say I could tell right away that this book wasn't for me. I found the writing style to be incredibly difficult to follow and off-putting. It will simultaneously incredibly vulgar but also felt like it was a middle grade or YA at the same time to the point where I had to double check what age category this book was in. The synopsis sounded right up my alley, but this really fell flat for me.

3.5 stars !

i honestly don’t know what to think about this book. this is nothing like i’ve read before so i knew i’d be stepping out of my comfort zone, but i still wasn’t expecting that.

i enjoyed reading about the magic and the elements and i loved the dual pov so we could learn about jay and rascal! however, the writing style wasn’t really for me and it put me off at first, but i still decided to try and found some enjoyment out of it. probably not a book i’d recommended to others, but if you want to give it a go just go for it, it’ll be a strange, what-the-fuck quick read for you!

thank you netgalley and the publisher for giving me a copy in exchange for an honest review

I think this book has its highs fro sure. I think if it finds its right audience it will do wonders. but as someone who is american a lot of the language and slang seemed... confusing and i found myself reaching for my phone a bit too much to enjoy this sadly. i wish that was not the case, but it is. overall the theme and plot is there, but it just seems a little hard to follow so im giving it an average rating of 3/5 stars

1⭐️

ARC kindly provided by publisher via NetGally for an honest review.

DNF @ 25%… Unfortunately the book was not it for me. The cover and description had a very interesting premise, but the writing and story itself fell flat for me.

The beginning of this book had me hooked. I especially enjoy books that somehow talk about heaven/hell or have some angelic/demonic representation. Having been raised in a Catholic household, but being atheist myself, I have always gravitated towards books that would put my parents' religion into different perspectives. Hence why I was drawn to this book. I have to say that from the very beginning, I quite realized that it was not going to go the way I had expected.

Nonetheless, I was entrapped with the theme presented: the degradation and corruption of the human soul because of the incessant search of revenge.

The book has a very YAtish narration, I generally do not mind this, but I think it kind of clashed with the theme presented, as it has a very dark tone.

Although I was indeed hooked from the beginning, and I read the book fairly quickly, I struggled with it many, many times, starting around half the book.

When the main character, Jay, is first presented, it is easy to understand him and feel compassion towards him, but that's about all I can say about him. There's is absolutely no character evolution. Well, there is an 'involution' (which, yes, I said was the main theme for me), but one the made absolutely no sense, and invalidated everything seen.

Regarding the rest of the characters, I feel there is nothing much to say about them. Some of them have very important roles approaching the very end of the book, and yet, we see almost nothing of them. They were as plain as they could be.

I was expecting to see more 'action', or at least I wanted to see interesting things happening in the book, but I think the majority of the things that happened (although sometimes gruesome) lacked anything remotely similar to being impactful. Although the book is very WTF in the end (it wasn't good per se, but it really surprised me).

I gave it 3☆ because even if I struggled to finish it and even lost a bit of interest towards half of it, I did like a lot the beginning and still was hooked enough in the story to not DNF it.

The intro piece really gives a whole new perspective before even getting into the story - knowing that in part this story reflects, or somewhat represents, some of the author’s experiences made this read even more impactful and powerful. A mosaic of truths and lies, where we too, as readers, forget where reality ends and fiction begins.

That being said, ‘Rascal’ was a whirlwind of craziness, one of the weirdest plots I’ve encountered recently. I should’ve expected nothing less after reading ‘Cream’’.
In his desperate and frenzied search for revenge against his bullies, Jay summons Rascal the demon, whose only objective is to gain power in Hell, but to do so he must drag Jay down with him.
What ensues from this deathly pact is a rapid descension into chaos. Not only does Jay risk losing those he cares about, but also his humanity.

The predominant emotion this left me with is confusion. The plot was very convoluted and messy. As the reader, I was kept out of the loop for most things going on. The scheming and revenge planning happened off page, showing me the aftermath of it all instead of letting me participate.
The Hell politics took up a way too much screen time, and it was unfortunately not all that interesting.
Not to mention the insane dynamic between the characters.

For how outrageous the plot was, I still very much enjoy Jay H.D.’s writing style. Apparently, I don’t need to enjoy the book to still be able to appreciate their art.

This book was so fun!

I liked the idea behind the story and the writing style is very YA in my opinion, so it wasn't exactly the kind of book I'd usually gravitate towards. In saying that, I still did have a good time reading this.

I am also a big fan of dual/multiple POV and this did a good job of differentiating between the characters, so both felt unique.

I will agree with some other reviewers that the ending is a bit of a rush, so I did lower my rating for that reason.

All in all, this is a great LGBTQ+ book about revenge, and it does take you on a ride. It's just a shame about the ending!

I had fun with this book! The horror/gory elements of the story were more out of my comfort zone, but I liked all of the characters a lot. The relationships were messy and interesting. I loved the writing style! Watching a queer kid get revenge on his bullies was also a bit satisfying tbh 👀