Lustlocked, by Matt Wallace

What a fun and saucy little book this is!

Second in a series known as “A Sin du Jour Affair,” Lustlocked picks up where the first book of the series, Envy of Angels, left off.  It follows culinary worker roommates Lena Tarr and Darren Vargas as they move past their probationary period with Sin du Jour, a private catering company based in Long Island that serves a very, um, “exclusive” clientele.  As in supernatural.

In Envy of Angels, celebrity Chef Byron “Bronko” Luck and his team – including newbies Lena and Darren – catered a meeting between two warring demon tribes.  In Lustlocked, the event is the wedding of the son of the Goblin King and Queen, and his human bride.  And even though Lena and Darren, now under contract, might have thought that a demonic menu was, um, challenging to create, that was nothing with what they will be up against at a goblin/human affair.  And the menu might be the least of their worries.

Sounds ridiculous, right?  Well, the great thing about the Sin du Jour books is – they are ridiculous!  And fun.  The characters could be right out of a Wes Anderson movie – stylishly absurd and wacky in at totally serious and committed way.  Told straightforwardly with a tongue firmly in cheek (yes, it can be done!), author Matt Wallace mixes both the mundane and the preposterous in a way that is totally entertaining.

And more than a bit raunchy.  Not perverted, not prurient.  But, um, with a title of “Lustlocked” you get a clue of a major aspect of this book.  Go ahead and try to imagine what it might be… you’d be wrong.  Well, you’d be right – but wrong.  This book goes to a place that not only would you never imagine it going, but it wouldn’t even occur to you as someplace to go.  It’s that good.  And that funny.  And that… ridiculously fun.

Listen, this is a short, little book.  It might even be a novella.  It’s written with an easy, breezy voice, it clicks along without a lot of exposition and absolutely no navel gazing, and you can read it at a madcap pace and not lose one iota of enjoyment in the frolic.  And if I were to spend any more ink on telling you more about the plot, I’d spoil something that you really want to find out on your own.

So stop reading this, and start reading Lustlocked; or better yet, Envy of Angels and then Lustlocked.  It won’t take you long, and you’ll have fun.  Go ahead – I won’t tell anybody, promise.  But you’ll thank me, later.  I guarantee it.

—Sharon Browning