Many thanks to Net Galley and RB Media for an audio copy of Damned if You Do for an honest review.

This was a good story. This is a queer demon story. The story was entertaining, the narrating was not. 4 stars.

I received an audio ARC from Netgalley for an honest review.

I really liked this. For a debut novel, it was done very well and did not miss a beat.

Found family, Filipino culture and mythology, queer teenage angst, horror comedy? Honestly, what more could you want in a book. I loved our little found family of characters so, so much. I adore reading about folklore from different cultures, so this was an exciting one for me! The world building was very solid, especially for something so urban. I loved that the whole thing was with a theater production as a backdrop. I loved the queer representation and friendships. I loved talking about trauma and therapy so openly. The ending made my heart smile so much. Would definitely recommend.

3.5 stars rounded up

Pitched as queer Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Filipino folklore, Damned if You Do is a YA horror novel that really centers on parental abuse and the misplaced guilt that abused children might carry.

Cordelia is a high school student who is struggling academically, but committed to running the tech side of school plays, and is secretly crushing on her best friend. When she was a tween, her abusive father moved to Florida after trying to kill her, but maybe that's not actually what happened? And of course she lives in a town founded on a supposed deal with a demon, so when she finds out that their guidance counselor is also a demon, she's roped into a complicated mess of life and death, trying to capture a demon.

I think this is a solid debut novel and uses horror as a way to work through this issue of abuse and letting go of a sense of guilt. I didn't go in expecting that element to be so intense and I want to make sure people are aware- she ends up interacting with her abuser in some disturbing ways though I think the ending does a good job of pulling everything together. The inclusion of Filipino folklore was cool too. I wanted a little bit more from the sapphic maybe romance plot arc and I think I was expecting something a bit more campy. This has camp elements, but also a lot of more serious bits. I could see this being turned into a series if it does well! The audio narration is pretty good. I received an audio review copy of this book via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

Cordelia’s abusive father left town seven years ago, and everything has been pretty normal since - even though there’s definitely something… missing? But when Fred, high school guidance counsellor(and demon), reveals that the missing piece is her soul, bargained away to send her father to hell, she’s forced to help this demon to avoid spending eternity in hell with him.

This was an unexpected delight. The premise had me immediately - queer horror-comedy with Filipino folklore and a high school drama production? I’m IN.

But the story was so unbelievably sweet in so many ways. The friends to lovers romance on the side, the annoying rich kid’s vulnerable character development, and the camaraderie of a theatre production in its final stages pre-opening night all made this horror story feel more grounded in reality. I also appreciated the spectrum of identities represented, and the way it handled trauma.

Where it truly excelled though was in the horror. A town founded on a deal with a demon, the connection to hell through her father, the urgency of action heightening every move - while not inherently scary or gory(as the horror elements are grounded in fantasy and folklore), the anticipation and kitschy nature of this story was so well done. Plus, I love Fred. (I do have an affinity for demonic characters with hearts of gold)

I’d highly recommend this as an audiobook, but I think it will shine in any format. As my mother is a huge Buffy fan, I am forcing her to read this IMMEDIATELY. Perfect read as we approach spooky season!

May all your demons also get trapped in a Precious Moments Maleficent figurine.

Thank you Netgalley and RB Media for an advanced copy of this audiobook.

When I was looking at this book, what caught me was that this book was a Queer Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets Filipino Folklore and I was immediately sold. As someone who grew up with Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this marked all my check marks off my list.

Cordelia Davis was 11 years old when she made a deal with a demon. 7 years later that demon returns as Fred, who is under the impression of her guidance counselor. When he confronts her to hold up her end of the bargain to entrap another demon, things start to get a little out of hand.

This book was filled with comedy, horror, friendship, fighting your most epic demons, and of course falling in love with your best friend. I loved this sapphic story and hope to read more from this author.

Holy smokes this was fabulous!!! I first saw Damned if You Do by Alex Brown pitched as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Filipino Folklore and was instantly sold! As a Buffy fan from day one I just knew this book was going to be fantastic!

We follow Cordelia who unknowingly sold a piece of her soul to a Demon - the upside? She now has a chance to earn it back! All she needs to do is help him defeat his demonic rival. The issue? She’s a high school student, it’s tech week for their theatre group, her bff may be a monster, the demon has taken up residence as her guidance counselor and she has an endless amount of homework and pop quizzes!

I absolutely loved this! It felt like reading a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the High School Musical Episode of Supernatural with a side of Filipino Folklore. It was horrifyingly hilarious and monstrously fun - jam packed with found family, friendship, action, cheeky demons, coming of age realness and general badassary!

Thank you so much to RB Media for the advanced copy. Amielynn Abellera did an amazing job bringing the story to life!

In a similar vein to Herrick's End, this story takes serious abuse and puts a fantasy spin on it - not to minimize or ignore it, but tell a good story and instill personal worth and value.
Like many YA books, this one focus a lot (perhaps too much) on a G-rated romance. There is a diverse cast of characters sexual orientations.
I enjoyed the narrator, but some of the voices they used for other characters was a bit annoying.

Thank you first to NetGalley and RB Media for giving me access to an audiobook copy of this novel early in exchange for an honest review.

The concept and description of this book were so exciting to me— a story about overcoming familial trauma and abuse that also ties in queer love as well as folklore, that promised to be heavy with symbolism. I couldn’t wait to get started. It could have been all these things and more. It took a few shots at issues within the Catholic Church, as well as imperialism and colonization, but for me that was really where the positive themes ended.

The queer relationship that it touted so openly in the description, and talked about right in the first chapter has truly zero chemistry, even though these two girls have supposedly been friends for most of their lives. There’s an attempt to make up for this by having them call each other pet names and nick names, but it does not make up for the lack of serious emotion between them. But this could just be a side effect of a larger issue I have with the novel, which is that none of the characterization is strong OR consistent. Characters will be weeping one moment, laughing cheerily seconds later, and then vowing angry revenge moments after that. There are innumerable scenes that are just two characters going back and forth arguing until one of them eventually gives in, and the readers really gain nothing— not character information, not plot information, not emotional information. Scenes like this make up most of the book. And people smirk SO MUCH.

Within all these scenes of talking and netting zero information, some of them actually reveal that information has been intentionally withheld from the reader. This is a huge faux pas in writing. You can withhold as much information as you’d like from your characters, but there should be no reason to withhold something from your reader just so you can reveal it at a particularly tense moment. It cheapens the reveal and upsets the readers to know we could have had this information the whole time, and it was being kept from us intentionally.

There are multiple times throughout the novel that I was thrown off by the pacing (I think largely because it would go from those talking scenes I mentioned, that spanned often whole chapters, immediately into a demon attack that lasted two minutes). The demon antagonists loved to talk, and I definitely can get behind a villain monologue, but you can’t have a back and forth conversation in the middle of a fight, especially if it’s just:
“Make a deal with me.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You have to, it’s the only way.”
“No, I can’t.”
“You have to!”
“No!”
I’m exaggerating a bit, but many of the back and forth conversations in the novel did sound a lot like what I’ve written out above. I will admit there were a few funny lines throughout that I enjoyed, but the majority of the dialogue was clunky and did not feel natural whatsoever.

Lastly, the magic system is not explained at all. There are monsters and demons in this world who can shape-shift and shoot fireballs— and supposedly they all have limits, that’s even mentioned once in the text. But those limits then never come back up. We know demons have different power levels, what does that mean for their magic? There was no explanation given, and I found myself feeling lost whenever one of the demons did some sort of magic because, well, how did he do that?

I will admit at the end here at least a partial bias— I don’t generally listen to audiobooks, so this was a different experience for me. Perhaps my thoughts would be different had I read the novel myself— but I doubt it. I think the only good thing about this audiobook is that I was able to crochet while listening to it. If you’re looking for something new to read or listen to, “Damned If You Do” is not it.

Thank you @netgalley and RB Media for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review. Shout out to the audiobook narrator, Amielynn Abellera, who went all out and made this book so much fun to listen to. Her pacing & character vocalization is commendable.

This was so much fun to read!!! this is your classic YA supernatural/fantasy-comedy novel. Like the premise says Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Filipino folklore & Demon capitalism. ftw

First things first, sapphic romance and mutual pining in a supernatural comedy… you already have my love and attention. Both the characters are so in love with the each other & there’s just so much pining..im going to puke hearts and flowers snsbdh

The characters are all lovable, quirky and witty. It’s fast paced, there’s action going on, the filipino folklore rep was good, there’s theater appreciation too. It could feel campy at times but it’s still a fun read.

Cordelia is strong, snarky and has a stubborn personality but she’s still adorable & hell of a fighter and so is her friends group. and Fred has my entire heart, demon or not.

The only drawback would be- Cordelia’s deal with the demon regarding her father & her relationship with her mother, felt repetitive & off at times. & the comedy aspects does feel forced a bit towards the end.

Reminds you of shows like Buffy the Vamp. Slayer, Shadowhunters, Sabrina.

Nonetheless, this was quick & eccentric book, kept me engaged and made me laugh at times. I would 100% recommend this book for the amount of things its representing and appreciating and i can’t wait to see what Alex Brown has in store for us.

I was really excited for this one, so much promise, but it just didn't work for me. Maybe in print form I would have enjoyed it more.

While I did adjust my expectations to YA, there is something missing in the character development. Instead of interesting and complex the motivations feel forced and repetitive. I really wish the author trusted their characters and their writing a little more.

I was not a fan of the narration, the use of voices was over the top and grating. By the end I was pushing the speed to 2.0 to just get it over with.

I'm so sad, I really really wanted to like this one.

A dramatic cover and an intriguing summary can't make up for inexperienced writing.

The hook is a great one - who wouldn't want to read about demons, soul contracts, and Filipino folklore against the backdrop of high school theater? But the skill to pull off the story well just isn't here.

A lot of the story focuses on an abusive parent and without the writing chops to evoke empathy the whole thing becomes a rough miss. There's no nuance or emotional grit - just repetitive, informative angst played very straightforwardly. Taking out every reminder of Cordelia sending her father to hell and Cordelia dwelling on whether she's a monster would cut the book down by at least a quarter!

Characters are despicable jerks until they're suddenly not. Even the promise of folklore can't save the story - "Filipino folklore" can be boiled down to "there's one supernatural creature from Filipino legend." Granted, it's a cool one! I wanted more of that. I also wanted more of the sapphic romance, which is nice even when the plot dictates that the main character makes inexplicable choices purely to forestall an obviously inevitable relationship.

The book itself suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. The focus on angst ridden teenage romance takes a sudden turn to a dark, violent murder before returning to the regularly scheduled plot laced with one-liners. The characters try so hard to be young and cool and relatable and end up feeling pretty campy instead.

Some of the problem for me is in the audiobook narrator. I appreciate the attention to different voices for the various characters; I just hate half of the voices used. (why the weird vibrating vocals for Dustin!?) Stretches of exposition are mostly fine, but dialogue often cues a switch to odd cadences that sound like performatively bad actors and not like actual humans talking. Emotion comes through nicely in some scenes, while in others the inflection and volume of a character doesn't match what the writing indicates. It could be much worse! but it's also not an experience I'd like to revisit.

I'm truly sorry to have felt this way about such a promising book. I wanted to love it! but it simply didn't work for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and RB Media for an audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted more from the side characters. Cordelia was a shining star, mostly, but there wasn’t much of anything beyond an outline to anyone else - not even Fred. It also felt like there was so much time spent talking about what was going to happen and then it did not go remotely as was discussed, so it kind of felt like much of the story could have been cut to make the pacing better.

I really liked the aswang - though I wished we got a bit more context and the mythos behind them (shapeshifting witch/vampire just sounds awesome? Please tell me more!) And I liked the way the author played with Cordelia’s expectations about the aswang in order to make it both scarier and more unexpected.

Also, the audiobook narrator made some… strange and rather inconsistent choices for character voices. It made it very hard to take the story seriously.

The easiest way to get me interested in reading a book, is mentioning Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Add to that some Filipino folklore, and you’ve got me hooked.

In this novel we follow Cordelia Scott as she discovers she accidentally gave a part of her soul to a demon, and now she has to trap another demon to get her soul back. All while battling a massive crush on her best friend, as well as being the stage manager of a high school play.

I don’t even know where to start with this novel, it’s queer, diverse, it’s got folklore and demons. What more could you want from a Young Adult novel?

The audiobook was a joy to listen to, and made the novel even more enjoyable. Like Buffy, it deals with a lot of heavier topics, while still having that signature Buffy humor.

This was a very quick and fun read that I highly recommend for the target audience Young Adults as well as people that are looking for books with the same vibe as the earlier seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Big thanks to Netgalley, RB Media and the author, Alex Brown for allowing me to listen to the Audio- ARC.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A delightful read with an incredible narrator! The ending left me intrigued and I can't wait for more. While I woulf have wished for more worldbuilding, the character interaction made up for it!

The book had me at "queer Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Even knowing nothing can really stand up to Buffy....like ever....I couldn't resist requesting this ARC.
It's classified as horror comedy, and I'm not sure this gives the right idea. The horror lies more in real life stuff than in the supernatural (at this point there are parallels to Buffy) and the story even deals with some serious issues of abuse. The comedy part is...well, either really lame or just not made for me. While Buffy pretty much redefined humor, here I can only find myself smirking at maybe one or two jokes.
However, the story is cute and interesting enough to get through the audiobook. When though I was not too fond of the narrator's voice, as to me it was annoying at times the character didn't need it to be.
To me it's 2,5/5 stars but it's not a bad book at all. Just don't expect any Buffy magic.

Thank you @netgalley and RB Media for the eARC ,,

Firstly, the reader of this audiobook was excellent. Her performance was emotional and the characters were well differentiated from one another. I enjoyed the reading pacing as the action rose and fell. The personality of protagonist really came through, both in writing style and in voice acting.

Next, my thoughts on the substance of the story itself. This was an exciting fast-paced YA novel that touched on many themes, none of which felt they were infringing on the meat of the story itself. The fear and exhilaration of teenage romance, acceptance, and love. Recovering from trauma and abuse, and the fear that the cycle of abuse is inescapable. The lesson that we are more than our worst moments, and more than our mistakes.

The cultural representation of Filipino folklore was intriguing, if a bit disappointing in its brevity. The “deal with a demon” angle was really fun, but somewhat contradictory and shallow. Good if you don’t take too long thinking about it, but odd. What demons are capable of seems to be whatever fits the narrative in the moment. There’s brief moments that hint that angels are real? Or maybe not…? And do the demons have names outside of “Fred” and “Jessie?” Because it's very funny they just call them by their human names. And are they genies? This whole “trapped” in a figurine thing was comical, but less Catholic demon, and more Aladdin.

The human element and emotion in this novel is mildly reminiscent of Percy Jackson, especially in the acknowledgement that everything crazy happening is insane, and the realistic reactions to seeing it happen.

I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy relatable/likable main characters in a YA setting. It’s emotional and compelling.

I think the genre classification „horror“ & „YA“ had me expecting something a little different in terms of atmosphere, but in the end I still enjoyed the book very much.
I can imagine that the book is certainly a bit „scarier“ for younger readers, but for me it was largely just funny and sweet and sometimes hilarious.
Somehow it felt like typical YA fantasy and yet it was refreshing. I liked the idea of demons and neutralize one, because it all reminded me a bit of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. (Also the whole setting in general)

Cordelia and the characters around her all grew on me very quickly and they were just normal teenagers with standard problems. (More or less) All the characterisations were typical, not new or exciting, but you just felt at home immediately. Also, of course, our teens were (mostly) totally brave and faced the supernatural problems and didn’t have a massive breakdown. (Minor ones there were, but who needs major ones when there’s the town to save).
All this is quite illogical, of course, but typical for the genre.

The pacing of the story was fast and so there was always something happening and the action (the horror) didn’t slow down. I personally liked that quite a lot, because it made it clear once again how little time Cordelia actually has to do her job. What I also really liked was that the love interest wasn’t the focus. You knew someone had feelings for someone, but it stayed in the background for the most part. Loved it!

I also liked the humour in the book, even if it was sometimes a bit too forced for me and especially towards the end ... it was just inappropriate and made a mockery of the seriousness of the situation.

Whether I liked the chapter titles or not, I can’t really say. They were somehow very appealing. („In which I lied to a priest“ / „In which I ...“) What bothered me a bit was that they always gave away what was going to happen in the chapter and therefore a bit of tension was lost.
I mean, I liked the way „In which I“ was, because it was just very approachable somehow, but maybe they could have come up with something more subtle there.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed listening to Amielynn Abellera! For me, her reading pace was perfect and I was so fascinated by how she highlighted each character vocally. Maybe some characters sounded a little funny in between, but I loved how well I could tell them all apart and how creative Amielynn Abellera was.
The direct speech was sometimes a little too slow for me to read and Cordelia sounded more aggressive from time to time than the book gave her credit for.
What I particularly liked was how Amielynn Abellera brought out grief and also anger and also that the quality of the audio was really good. <3

All in all, a nice book for YA fans and that’s exactly who I would recommend it to. :)

Thanks to RB Media, NetGalley, and Alex Brown and the delightful Amielynn Abellerra for the listening pleasure and reviewing opportunity of the advance audiobook Damned If You Do. The story takes place on and around a high school musical. The heroine is a high school stage manager who accidentally sold her soul to a demon but hasn’t realized how it happened until the demon, also known as her guidance counselor 😂, needs her help and has to remind her what happened in her past. Things get complicated from there on out. It’s a fun and spooky read.

This was a fun, easy read! Themes of guilt, loss, and friendship ran steadily throughout the book.
The conversations and exposition felt uncomplicated so think very Young Adult.

Cordelia has A LOT going on and handles it exactly how a high schooler would - not very well. The character growth was heartwarming to see.

If you’re looking for Filipino and sapphic representation in YA, this is the book for you!