


Hope Adams, first introduced in the anthology Dates From Hell, finally gets her own book with Personal Demon. Hope is a tabloid reporter and member of the Supernatural Council who uses these two positions to get herself into situations that will feed the chaos demon that is part of her nature. When Benicio Cortez, leader of the most powerful warlock Cabal in the US calls in a favor that Hope owes him, she is almost too eager to accept the dangerous assignment and all the chaos vibes her demon side will be able to feed upon. Hope goes undercover and joins a supernatual gang in Miami that is starting to cause problems for the Cabal. Hope advises Lucas Cortez, also a member of the Supernatural Council and Benecio Cortez's son of her assignment and he agrees to come to Miami to do some digging around within the Cabal. Karl, Hope's ex-boyfriend and werewolf also flies in to help keep an eye on Hope.
Hope is taken on a few heists and revels in the chaos and excitement that the gang life provides. At first she believes that they are just a gang of young adults looking for thrills. But when important members of the Cabal end up dead, Hope realizes that she is in over her head. Part of her fears the dark world she has been drawn into while her demon half is feasting on all the chaos going on around her. Hope, Lucus and Karl must work fast and come up with a plan that will save Benecio from the gang members nefarious intentions.
The book has a very good flow to it and it is well plotted out with plenty of twists and turns in the story that keep you guessing right up until end. Armstrong has done a masterful job of tying events from previous Otherworld books into this story. I enjoyed this book, but it is not as good as previous installments of the Otherworld series. Hope is not a very dynamic character compared to other female protagonists in the series. Personal Demon is told from the point of view of both Hope and Lucas, but their voices in the book were so similar that I sometimes forgot whose voice was narrating the story and I had to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to check whose POV the chapter was being told from. Hope needed to stand out in the story more to help distinguish her voice from Lucas'. Luckily the story is strong enough to carry you through to the end of the book despite the fact that the main characters are kind of dull.
Hope will be narrating the next Otherworld book, Living with the Dead, due out in October. I just hope that Armstrong will give Hope a stronger and more interesting voice in the next book. Even with my mild criticism of the latest book, I still feel that Armstrong is one of the best story tellers in the Urban Fantasy genre and I continue to look forward to her books.