Review: Strays by A.J. Thomas

Orphaned at a young age and raised in the foster system, Jory Smith has no idea he’s half incubus. He only knows he has the power to heal people, making himself sick in the process. Exploited by a crooked faith healer who sells his abilities and his life to the highest bidder and then left for dead, Jory flees, falling into a job at a small-town café where he can put his lifelong obsession with baking to good use.

But the minister who exploited him wants him back.

Exiled hellhound-turned–bounty hunter Malpheus Pelle has no idea why his human client wants him to track down an incubus. Jory is traumatized and afraid to touch anyone, an emotional handicap that could prove fatal for a demon who requires physical contact. Needing answers, Mal concocts a disastrous plan: pretend to date Jory to uncover the truth. Unfortunately, his plan never included dealing with an ancient demon assassin, Jory’s orgasmic pumpkin cookies, or losing his heart to the incubus he’s supposed to be hunting….

I debated with myself a bit between three and four stars for Strays. I give the characters themselves four stars at a minimum, but I struggled with the world building. I loved the idea of it all, but had trouble with the flow of information.

I want to start with everything I loved first and there was a lot to be enamored with. Both Jory and Mal had pretty rough lives and neither were proud of everything in their pasts, but they weren’t bad dudes and they made for the kind of flawed characters you root for, faults and all.

Jory never had a real home growing up so never became too attached to much of anything or anyone. He ended up with a bible-thumping, con-artist of a minister and his natural abilities to heal were a boon to Adam, the false faither healer. When one of the scams nearly breaks him, Joey makes a run for it and finally is able to start a life of his own. I loved the bakery where he finally was able to make a home, even if he knew it was probably only going to be temporary. It gave his life a bittersweet edge, knowing how happy he was but also knowing he was always going to be living his life on the run.

Mal and his “pug” Louise were the best. Mal is an exiled Hellhound turned bounty hunter and while he is originally hired to track down Jory and return him to Adam (allegedly), once he actually met Jory and felt their connection we ALL knew that wasn’t going to be a thing. Louise is a Hellhound as well but sees herself as more of a pug and since Hellhounds can apparently shapeshift, that is her chosen form. The connection Mal and Louise had was a sweet little bonus of a side story that gave a lot of insight into Mal’s character.

Focusing on the relationship between the two is easy. Setting the supernatural aside, the connection between Mal and Jory is really very sweet and obvious to the reader. I liked that while they may have had their moments, at points in which shit got real, ghoul and demon-wise I mean, I never doubted that they would have each others backs and I think they both knew that as well. It kept me invested in them regardless of all the shenanigans going on around them.

And there were a lot of shenanigans. I loved the idea of the fantasy intermingling with mythology in a contemporary setting. By the end, when the whole story came together it made sense and I really liked many of the elements. My problem was that it felt like I had stepped into the middle and missed the beginning that was a foundation for the world building. The backstory to the paranormal aspect was doled out in little pieces to Jory (and the reader) throughout, but the bulk of the the book and the explanation of it all didn’t come until the end.

There were levels of backstory and I think it might have been just one level too much to explain in a book of this length. It was hard to appreciate all of them with any real depth so they felt tied together organically. There was the backstory of the inhabitants of the human world and then what I referred to in my head as the way-back backstory of the characters still living in Hel that we knew through storytelling, but not directly. There’s politics and scandal and treachery and all manner of Hel type intrigue to be had. The way the story was told, they were all dependent on one another, so they were necessary, but I could have done without the way-back backstory to give more focus to what was affecting the MC’s and secondary characters directly. That would have given me way better perspective on their motivations much sooner and I would have felt more focused with the paranormal elements of the story. The “too much” of it all felt like a scatter shot of plot points versus a tight world building narrative.

I have to give major kudos for the book cover! The MC’s description was represented beautifully and that doesn’t always happen. I love when the cover actually feels like a depiction of who, or what is “inside”. A book dedicated to the way-back backstory would be amazing and a follow up with Keygan and Neal would definitely be interesting. I think if I had a prequel set in Hel I could reread Strays with much more understanding and appreciation.

**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**