I will admit that sometimes I just pick a book without paying attention if it is part of a series or not. This was one of those times, but thankfully I didn’t need to have read the other books for this one to make sense. What can I say? How could I not read a book whose synopsis says: “John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they’ve killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he’s always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can. . . . . . but the monsters have noticed” . I mean, how could I resist? Seriously?
So, Devil’s Only Friend is actually book 4 in the John Cleaver series, but as I mentioned you can actually pick this book up without reading the others. Although, it was interesting enough to make me want to read the books I skipped over. So, in this book the “demons” are not demons in the traditional sense, but more like monsters (they called them Withered) who feed on humans. In fact, there was a cannibal, a monster that pushed its sickness onto people, and monster that ate memories. But what really stood out to me was the character John Cleaver! He is a sociopath and the book was written from his perspective. This was so interesting! Wells does a wonderful job bringing this unusual character to life. The way he views people was so interesting! I mean, how often do you get to read a book where the main character likes to analyze how he would go about killing the people he is with?
The book itself gave off the feeling of a crime drama, which I loved. I enjoyed the way they did stakeouts and analyzed each of the Withered so that they could kill them. But It wasn’t until a cannibal named The Hunter that the book really got interesting. This Withered really threw the team off their game and ultimately was the reason for many deaths in this book. The final show down was better than I anticipated and it was interesting enough to make me curious about the rest of this series. Overall, the book was entertaining. There were some violent and slightly graphic parts but it wasn’t too extreme. If I had to rate how graphic it was I would say PG-15 or 16. I think it might have been a bit too mature for a younger audience. Still, it was an interesting read and I think I will give other books by this author a shot!
The Owl's Book Nest 