A review by rainbowbrarian
Damned If You Do by Alex Brown

4.0

This was advertised as a queer Filipino Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it lived up to that description!

Cordy made a deal with a demon ten years ago to keep her abusive alcoholic father from killing her.  It’s been eating away at her ever since then.  Suddenly, on the eve of a big theater production that Cordy is stage managing, the demon shows up and says her bill is due.  But instead of taking her soul, he wants her to help him get revenge on a rival demon.  Cordy only has a few days to figure out how to do this, and on top of that, she’s trying to figure out how to confess her feelings to Veronica her childhood BFF, and how to deal with the rich asshole kid whose family basically runs the town.

This was a fun read, I loved seeing the relationship between Cordy and Fred as it grew and changed.  It was really cool seeing how Alex wove Filipino culture and monsters into this story.  It had a great plot and I was really hooked and wanted to see how the story was going to turn out.

My only real critique is that I think Cordy beat herself up WAY too much about sending her father to hell.  He was an abusive asshole who LITERALLY was trying to kill her.  I felt like her constant self hate over that was too much.  

Favorite Parts - The Maleficent precious moments figurine!  And I loved that a lot of action took place literally on the theater stage.

Read This If You - Were a theater kid in school, loved BTVS, like monsters from other cultures and want a fantastic queer monster fighting story