Title: Sweet Dreams
Author: Linda Winstead Jones
In: The Magical Christmas Cat (Lora Leigh, Erin McCarthy, Nalini Singh & Linda Winstead Jones)
Rating Out of 5: 4.5 (Amazing, but not quite perfect)
My Bookshelves: Christmas, Demons, Paranormal romance
Pace: Medium
Format: Novella
Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Year: 2008
5th sentence, 74th page: They milled about in her yard and on the street.

Zane is sworn to stop the demon from rising, but when he discovers who the final victim is, things take a more intense turn.

Well. This novella did not take the direction I was expecting at all. It starts at a neighbourhood Christmas party, with a quiet baker and an enigmatic professor. I figured that they would slowly fall in love, have some kind of paranormal influence that helps it along (since it’s in a paranormal romance collection) and then sweep off into the sunset to live happily ever after. And some of that does actually happen, just not in the way that was expected.

I haven’t read a really intense demon story in a little while – and reading this novella that features a soul-stealing demon trying to rise… at Christmas time… made me remember how much I love almost anything that features demons. There is something that is just quintessentially evil and overwhelming about a good demon story. And, by setting this against the backdrop of Christmas and a budding romance, Jones really swept me away. I stayed up way too late reading this, just to find out if they would survive.

I loved the dream sequences throughout the storyline. Not only did they obviously warn at what was to come, but they provided subtle clues as to the bad guy in the story and maybe even a way in which to overcome him. The foreshadowing was brilliant, and I think that it will be one of those stories that I will gain more out of each time I reread it.

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Image source: Amazon