Review: Nobody Loves an Incubus by Dylan James

Title: Nobody Loves an Incubus

Series: Fangville High: Book Two

Author: Dylan James

Length: 165 Pages

Category: YA, Paranormal

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: I’m fully on board with this delightful YA adventure through the hallowed halls of monster academia. It’s just so darn cute.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Serge is an incubus—one of the sexiest creatures alive. He has reigned long as king of the school.

But after getting his heart broken by a boy he genuinely liked, Serge is facing a crisis of identity. To continue being who he is only seems to lead to loneliness and heartbreak. Maybe he needs to change, to be truer to himself. The bad boy attitude is just an act, after all.

As he navigates this crisis with the help of Bram, his best friend, he starts receiving a nightly visitor—a cute ghost boy with gorgeous eyes, who appears for only a few minutes in the deepest, darkest depths of the night. Serge is desperate to talk to him, to get to know him, but any attempts at communicating with the ghost are met with silence. The boy doesn’t seem to even know he’s there.

To build that bridge and communicate with the ghost, Serge must do the thing he least wants—enlist the help of Victor and Igor, boys he used to tease mercilessly. It’s a gamble and the stakes are high, especially given the fact that life has taught Serge one thing and one thing only…

Nobody love an incubus.

Review: Serge wasn’t a very nice incubus in Dylan James’s adorably quirky Frankenstein Builds a Boyfriend. In fact, Serge had a reputation for being a real bully—albeit a tempting one, because, hey, incubus—until Cole (said boyfriend that Victor Frankenstein built) took Serge down quite a few pegs at the end of that book. Is Serge truly unlovable? I guess that depends upon whom you ask. There’s a ghostly spirit named David haunting Serge’s bedroom every night who seems to find Serge irresistible.

If you’re not familiar with Fangville High yet, it’s a monster’s paradise. Except it’s still high school, so there’s that. There’s the cliques and the angst, but it all comes along with a heaping helping of charm and sweetness too. And with just a little backstory and some teenage pining, the author turns Serge into a loveable and sympathetic character.

What Nobody Loves an Incubus lacks in relationship building between Serge and his gorgeous visitor, the story more than makes up for in Serge’s transformation. It’s not only a broken heart that leads Serge to try to be a better demon; it’s his friendship with his best friend Bram too. As Serge begins to dip his toes into a well of kindness towards other, what he gets in return are the sort of bonds that make him realize he’s both loveable and likeable. Victor and his boyfriend, Igor, both offer Serge forgiveness, and Serge even gets the chance to play relationship advisor along the way.

Unless I’m much mistaken, Dylan James is setting Bram (a vampire, obvs) up to be the next to find love at Fangville High. Regardless, I’m fully on board with this delightful YA adventure through the hallowed halls of monster academia. It’s just so darn cute. And that scene with Serge’s parents? That touched my heart in all the best ways.