The Mephisto Covenant by Trinity Faegen

Sasha is desperate to find out who murdered her father. When getting the answer means pledging her soul to Eryx, she unlocks a secret that puts her in grave danger—Sasha is Anabo, a daughter of Eve, and Eryx’s biggest threat.

A son of Hell, immortal, and bound to Earth forever, Jax looks for redemption in the Mephisto Covenant—God’s promise he will find peace in the love of an Anabo. After a thousand years, he’s finally found the girl he’s been searching for: Sasha.

With the threat of Eryx looming, Jax has to keep Sasha safe and win her over. But can he? Will Sasha love him and give up her mortal life?

This book didn’t really work for me. It was bugging me from the beginning. The first chapter is nearly all exposition of the lead male’s back story in a very read-out manner, and at the end of the chapter the lead male makes the lead female forget the whole story so we have to read it again in chapter 3. Chapter 2 is a similar exposition dump on the back story of the lead female. There is more of the same exposition stated again and again in the book whenever it comes up again. I can’t tell if the author is reveling in her own cleverness or thinks the reader needs to be told things seven times before they understand them, but it’s very annoying either way. Once you get past the complicated and unnecessarily tangled back plot the story is pretty straightforward and rather frightening. The girl is destined to fall in love with the guy because “he smelled her first”. She realizes she loves him after he punches a guy friend of hers for greeting her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. His rages and attempts to control her behavior are 'only because he cares about her'. This is not the only issue I had with the book, though. I really couldn’t find an example of a healthy relationship in the whole thing. Even the relationships you think are stable end up being selfish and scarred. Add on the fact that the lead character is “without sin” and presented as perfection incarnate and the whole book really became rather blah. I’ll be passing on the sequel.