Four years too late! This one looks so good, and still tempts me from my TBR. Someday, when the stars align!

this was a nice surprise!
Set in the same world as Lucky Devil, so I greatly enjoyed it.
Margret is a great character, she is fresh and interesting and loved her wit. Elias was brilliantly written, loved the story about who and what he was and how it unfolded.

A disgusting attempt of instalove where a young man forces an old woman to "love" him as he "loves" her. I expected a really nice and cute story since romance is always between boys and girls, men and women, of the same age, and this seemed to be a risky story with potential. However, as soon as I read that the man was "so interested" in her, enough to bathe naked with Margaret, I had to put it down. I skipped entire paragraphs, and I just found more grumpiness from her part and more idiotic love from his. This is not romance, at all.

This was a pretty weird story which, sadly, I did not enjoy. The female MC Margaret was super cranky all the time, which I understand since she had a pretty crummy life, but it's hard to believe the male MC would like her when there's nothing to like. I mean, she just wouldn't stop being so obnoxious! Why would Elias, the male MC, like her? That's nice that he sees the potential in people, but this was pushing it a lot.

Then there's the fact that apparently this is a book which is in the middle of a series, or a spin-off of a series, but not enough background information is given, so I felt lost or confused at several points throughout the story.

I get it that the author wanted to portray drug use as a demon, but I wasn't sure for the longest time if this was supposed to be a personal demon, so Margaret's inner voice, or if it was an actual demon, which we don't find out till the end. It was too messy, not explained clearly.

Lastly, towards the end when Elias rejects Margaret because now she's pretty much an immortal and he only dates people who are close to death, then he pulls a 180 and finds her, it's impossible to believe he'd just change his mind completely out of nowhere. He wants to, not just stay with her, but also agrees to have kids after being so adamant about this, it was just too much.

So overall, I disliked this very much.

I hate to give a bad review, but I simply didn't enjoy this. It seemed choppy, and the world building was uneven at best. I love the premise, but I'm just not a fan.

I'm not exactly sure what I was supposed to take from this book. Although initially intrigued by the premise of a sort of reverse age gap romance, in which the heroine is the older one, I quickly lost interest. I found this book really dull, with large chunks of it taken up by descriptions of rooms. Various items in the rooms would be listed, so many and sometimes so specifically that I would lose track, because the items really didn't serve any purpose to the story overall. This was done multiple times.

I didn't realize this was part of a series when I decided to read it, and I don't think if having read the other books would have changed my enjoyment of this. The author's style isn't for me.

A tenacious love story with themes of drug use, magic, redemption and self care. A tale for the ages with a bit of the next story contained within.

3.5 stars.

This was my introduction to Megan Mackie's Lucky Devil world and since I bought and read the two Lucky Devil books immediately after finishing this you can tell I loved it.

I liked Margaret. I couldn't help it, I really liked her in all her injured irascibility. She was suspicious and distrustful of all the good things coming her way, which seemed exactly right to me. There were no easy fixes for her or Elias, there was instead the loving work they chose to do.

This book was a nice surprise!
There were some tiny flaws in my point of view, particularly the impression of missing some important background (normal as it's a series and not the first book, and the impression never conferred any sense of vagueness and never leaded to incomprehension, much more like listening to a conversation between people you dont' know well, speaking about important things you know nothing about and don't need to know - but still).

What I really liked was the consideration about old age and seduction. The fact that we nearly all of us agree that people should be attracted to people their age or younger, as if one had to be old to stand an old body to embrace.
The main character is old and not beautiful nor even neat, she's a homeless person, sad and disillusioned. Her manner of thinking and speaking is realistic and endearing, even funny sometimes.
The story itself is interesting, well developed, if a a little frustrating in the end- maybe just because a sequel is expected ?

To conclude a rather personal kind of story, a mix between urban fantasy and coming-of-age-again story.

A good paranormal with an interesting cast of characters and an entertaining plot.
I liked the style of writing and the world building.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this arc, all opinions are mine.