“A Job From Hell” by Jayde Scott was just plain bad.

Maybe as a 44 year old guy when I read it, I’m not the expected audience for it, but still… I’ve read a lot of fantasy over the years and a bit of chick-lit, but this was just bad. I found it while looking for fantasy novels that were free or very inexpensive, and I don’t think I realized this was teen paranormal romance stuff…

It starts with 17 year old Amber, from London, getting a summer job as a housekeeper somewhere in rural Scotland, with the cab driver refusing to take her all the way to the creepy, house because of superstitious rumors, leaving her to walk the rest of the way up. She spends a few days half-heartedly and utterly incompetently doing household chores (not that I could do better, mind you…) while things just seem odd.

Then her brother unexpectedly comes by, with an implausible explanation for what he, as a Londoner, is doing in rural Scotland. He has a scheme for the two of them to sneak around in the middle of the night to steal some jewels he spotted through the window of a cabin in the woods.

From there the job goes straight to hell for Amber and she gets mixed up with several kinds of supernatural, immortal folks, including her boss, Aiden, a 500+ year old vampire, his vampire brother and their close friend, Clare, the three of whom share the house. Then there’s Cassandra, the daughter of the most famous fallen angel who keeps popping by, and Shadow folks…

Unbelievably, Amber accepts all that very quickly, quicker than I, as a reader, could.

Some of the characters are interesting, some are as flat as cardboard. The bickering amongst various pairs gets annoying quickly. And it’s not very believable that they’d be bickering the way they do in the situations they’re in.

Most of the book is from Amber’s point of view, but occasional chapters are from Aiden’s. The context switches are very jarring, and often in the same scene, referring to the same people, but Ms. Scott isn’t a good enough writer to give them distinct enough voices to keep me from getting confused. Aiden’s chapters only make sense when they’re different scenes in different locations with different people around.

I made it to the end, but at this point I think I’ll avoid further books by this author. ( )

This book was nothing like I expected and I was torn over whether I wanted to give it 4 or 5 stars..

****************** Stats **********************
Hero : 5 Heroine : 4 Peak Factor:4 Plot:4 Writing:5
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Overall Star rating: 4.4 Great Book Stars

My Aidan:


My Amber:


I found this book funny, witty, and I have to say that I was stuck the entire book. When I first started I was only trying to clean another "free" book off of my Kindle. After I started reading this book I fell in love with the characters. Amber was not like many other heroins in the book but, I also felt that she was easily influenced to change her mind. I like a heroin who can stand up for herself. Aidan was mysterious but, the love he felt made me swoon..I found myself
at many parts of this book.. But, what made me really give four instead of five is because the end of the book left me like this I hate CLIFFHANGERS spoiler> but, I will be reading the next book in the series VERY soon!
( )

Let’s get this straight; this book, to me, was just like every other YA paranormal romance novel I have ever tried or completed reading. Although there were some aspects of the plot that could have been interesting, and the writing was interesting yet overall simple and a bit repetitive, I found the whole thing rather dull. I don’t usually like giving bad reviews, but all the way through reading this book, I fought the urge to just give up. I don’t feel like I’m being unfair to this novel as there were some small aspects that I enjoyed, but apart from the slight positives, there were a lot of negatives.

Not to jump on the Twilight-hating bandwagon, but I found that there were a lot of similarities between A Job from Hell and the Twilight series. Blake was almost exactly the same as Jasper Cullen as he was a bit wild and quite a new vampire. Also Amber seemed very similar to Bella in a lot of ways, in that she was a clumsy, quite plain girl, and yet she falls for the typical hot and sexy supernatural guy.

The characters in this novel were the thing that really bugged me. Aiden, although at first seemed like the hot tough guy, he became very immature and always put himself in danger without thinking of the consequences. Amber was similar in that way, and I found her a very weak and sometimes tedious character, and of course, being YA, there was that insta-love trope that keeps popping up.

Another thing that annoyed me slightly throughout this book was the pop culture references. During the book, many films and books were mentioned, such as ‘Ghost’, ‘The Exorcist’ and even ‘Lord of the Rings’, in what seemed like completely inappropriate situations, which began to distract from the story quite a lot.

I’m happy in a way that I got this free on Kindle and to be honest, I was drawn to the cover. Despite it being quite a typical YA paranormal romance cover, I have to admit that it is gorgeous and I really like the dark colours. Another good thing about this, is despite it being about 360 pages long, I managed to finish this in one day as it is quite a fast-paced novel.

Overall, I would have to give A Job From Hell by Jayde Scott 2 out of 5 stars, as I was disappointed in the plot, especially the ending, and I found that I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. However, I am not usually a massive fan of this genre, and I think that anyone who enjoys YA paranormal romance would probably really like this book so I can’t say that it shouldn’t be read, but it is just definitely not the right kind of book for me. ( )

I can't say I really liked this book, it was good but not super duper great.

I was a little weary at first, after I found out the main guy was a vampire. I am just not into vampire books. I did like the mix of characters and might even read the next book in the series, which is about Cassandra, the sarcastic and witty daughter of Lucifer and Dallas, the Amber's brother. Can I just say, there is going to be more dysfunction along the way for these two. ( )

What could be better than a summer in Scotland house-keeping in an old yet incredibly beautiful mansion that is owned by a boss you rarely ever see? Although cooking and cleaning are not really strengths (or even skills) she possesses, seventeen-year-old Amber sees the job as the perfect escape from her off-again relationship with her boyfriend and a way to build her college fund. Surely she can fake her way through a little cooking and cleaning, right?
Within a few days of her arrival, Amber gets a call from her brother Dallas who convinces Amber to accompany him on a smash and grab mission in the woods near the mansion. This is one of the few instances in A Job From Hell that I couldn’t really buy into for two reasons: 1) I couldn’t accept that being siblings was reason enough for the otherwise smart and responsible Amber to go along with theft and; 2) Scott goes to great lengths to establish the remote location of the mansion so how likely is it, really for Dallas to have found out about the jewels and their location in such a remote place? I got over myself and kept reading 
The ill-fated trip into the woods establishes Amber as the winner of a paranormal contest that was meant to be won, this time around, by none other than her boss, the totally lickable vampire, Aidan. For Amber, being a mortal and the winner of a paranormal contest is a dangerous combination. What Amber begins to discover is that winning the contest imbued her with certain powers that are held in high regard by most of the paranormal world. In other words, the pretty little mortal now has a huge target on her back – it so sucks to be her! As Aidan begins to unravel Amber’s role in the contest he also discovers an undeniable attraction to his housekeeper that he just can’t shake. Aidan’s attraction to Amber causes him to take more and more risks in order to ensure her safety and protect her life.
One of the things I like most about this book is Amber’s attitude and toughness. Rather than freaking out over the fact that her boss is a vampire and most of his friends are either vampire or some other breed of weird, she takes it all in and rolls with it. Additionally, as Amber comes to know Aidan and his reasons for so desperately wanting to retrieve the jewels himself, she sees no alternative but to suck it up and help him if she has any hope of returning to her “normal” life. Amber is resilient, snarky, and vulnerable all at once while Aidan is protective, stubborn, and vulnerable all at once. Aidan and Amber’s journey is fraught with drama, dilemmas, near-death (which is kind of huge for immortals) experiences, and ultimate victory. What the reader doesn’t see coming is the ultimate victory and what that victory actually is. Thank you, Jayde Scott for this particular ending - I find it tiring and completely unsatisfying knowing how a book is going to end before it actually ends.
Bottom line: this book was very good and perfectly directed at a young adult audience. For me, this book has it all: strong lead and secondary characters; a plot that is both strong and interesting; an appropriate level of fighting and action; and just a little bit of romance. In all, I found A Job From Hell quite entertaining and would certainly recommend it to those who enjoy a little paranormal in their lives. ( )