OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Kimberly Lemming is on an eternal quest to avoid her calling as a main character. She can be found giving the slip to that new werewolf that just blew into town and refusing to make eye contact with a prince of a far-off land. Dodging aliens looking for Earth booty can really take up a girl's time.

But when she’s not running from fate, she can be found writing diverse fantasy romance. Or just shoveling chocolate in her maw until she passes out on the couch.

 

FORMAT/INFO: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon was published on January 2nd, 2024 by Orbit Books; it was originally self-published July 22nd, 2021. It is 288 pages long and told from the first person POV of Cinnamon. It is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Cinnamon doesn't want a life of adventure. She wants a nice quiet life on the family farm, growing spice and trading jokes with her brothers. But when she accidentally breaks a spell controlling a demon, she finds herself dragged along on his quest to free the rest of his kind from an evil witch's magic. But in between all the fighting off cultists and rescuing dragons, she starts to realize that maybe this demon is exactly her kind of trouble after all.

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon is a breezy spicy fantasy read that is perfect for readers looking for a quick escape. But it's also a book for a very specific kind of reader: namely, those who want a fantasy world wrapper around the spicy treat inside. This is not a particularly deep read. The characters aren't very dimensional and the story itself is done in broad strokes. The plot is fairly simple: travel to a few temples, smash some relics, save the day. But at the end of the day, the readers who are going to get the most out of this are the ones who came for spice, as there are multiple explicit scenes.

And it's hard to fault the book for being exactly what it says it is! It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a tongue in cheek fantasy romance (I mean, the lead character is a spice farmer, that should tell you everything you need to know). If that isn't your cup of tea, simply move along to the next book. I enjoyed Cinnamon's no-nonsense attitude, coupled with her begrudging realization that she is indeed extremely physically attracted to the demon Fallon.

I was a little thrown, however, that this was a book where the violence was as explicit as the sex. At least one person gets an arm ripped off fairly early in the book, and evil people meet similarly dire ends. There's also depictions and references to some heavy themes like slavery. For a book with such a bright cover and general comedic tone, it was jarring to have these darker elements weaving through the story.

CONCLUSION: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon is the reading equivalent of empty calories. It's fun to consume, even if it doesn't have a lot of substance to it. This is definitely a Your Mileage May Vary book - if you want to watch a demon and a woman bicker, wreak havoc across the land, and eventually tear each other's clothes off, you'll probably enjoy this. If not...there's plenty of other books out there!