Sweet Peril

I’ll admit, I side-eyed the ‘angel-demon hybrid’ premise at first—been there, read that. But *Sweet Peril* hooked me in Chapter 3, when Anna’s mother, a guardian angel, *begs* her to embrace her darker half to survive. That’s not your typical ‘choose light’ moralizing; it’s a gut-punch moment that sets the tone for Higgins’ refusal to romanticize either side. The audiobook elevates this further with Erin Mallon’s performance, which is *so* good it’s almost distracting. She nails Anna’s exhaustion—like she’s carrying the weight of both heaven and hell in her ribs—while making Kaidan’s dialogue drip with the kind of charm that explains why Anna keeps falling for him, even when he’s mid-sin. The demonic nightclub scenes sizzle with Mallon’s sultry delivery, but she never lets the romance overshadow the stakes: this is a war, and Anna’s heart is the prize. That said, the middle act drags slightly with repetitive ‘will they/won’t they’ cycles between Anna and Kaidan, and the celestial lore occasionally gets bogged down in exposition (a 10-minute infodump on demon hierarchies could’ve been tighter). But the final act’s twist—where Anna’s choice isn’t between good and evil but between *two kinds of sacrifice*—landed like a punch to the sternum. The production quality is top-tier, with subtle audio cues (a church bell’s toll when angels near, the distorting echo of demonic whispers) that immerse without overpowering. If you’re craving YA with teeth—where the love story is as dangerous as the apocalypse it’s set against—this is your next listen. Just maybe don’t start it before bed. The moral dilemmas linger.