A review by thoughttojot
The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino

dark mysterious tense

2.5

What happens in certain (many) scenes is very dark and gore-filled, but somehow none of it manages to be actually scary. 

The story takes its time unspooling the horror aspects, but once the thread is cut you’re well and truly dropped in. It’s like stepping into a dark room from a sun-soaked day and your eyes need to adjust to the dimness. Except in this case, the story starts with the quiet of a dusty library and you step past a threshold, into the horrific consequences of… occult dealings. Academia, right?

And yet, the story lacks the knife’s-edge tension to be truly horrifying. 

The strongest aspects of the novel were the mundane moments.
The ones where Tess is peppering books with sticky note insults or struggling to juggle multiple jobs to keep her and her sister afloat. Or where Eliot is desperate and hopeful and heartbrokenly trying to find a way to help his mother.
These scenes are all so deeply and painfully human, that when the horror arrived I mostly felt disappointed.

In comparison, the gore and trying to figure out what’s up with the devil scenes lack the same emotionality as the mundane ones. I wish we could have gotten to see more moments where Tess was
tempted to take the devil up on his offer. If we were shown more often than told of her passion for music and the cello, seeing the consequences of her putting aside her own dreams would have been more impactful. She gave up the life she wanted for her family. The devil shows her what her life could be like, if she accepted his deal. Let her waver and grapple with morals. Let her be tempted.
Lean more into that!

I will say, I enjoyed both Tess and Eliot as characters. They just got a little lost in the horror along the way. 
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