Name: For Whom the Belle Tolls
Series: Hell’s Belles #1
Author: Jaysea Lynn
Publisher: Self Published
Format: Kindle
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal, Mythology
Noted Tropes: Life after Death, Found Family
Steam or Spice: Spice
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
They told her to go to Hell.
She’ll go on her own terms.
Lily is less than thrilled about her arrival to the Afterlife, but what awaits her is more fantastical than she ever could have imagined. Deities wait in line at the coffee shop. Fae flit between realms. Souls find ways to make death a beginning.
As Lily explores everything the Afterlife has to offer, she finds herself drawn to a place most people would rather avoid at all Hell.
What she discovers there subverts everything she’s ever learned, and Lily realizes the demons working at the gate to guide souls need help—badly. Armed with years of customer service experience and pent-up sarcasm, Lily carves out a place for herself among the demons, confronting, sassing, and aiding the spectrum of humanity to redefine justice and redemption.
A chance meeting with Bel, a demon general with a distractingly sexy voice, sparks an immediate and deeply healing friendship. However, the undeniable heat between them simmers, and it’s only a matter of time before it combusts.
Meanwhile, something stirs beyond the boundaries of their world, threatening to destroy everything they’ve ever known and everything that could be… unless they fight like Hell to stop it.
Review:
As a long time supporter of See Ya Later’s Hell’s Belle’s series on TikTok, I was very excited about the book news and have been following it a long for a while. Despite that, I somehow did not know that this existed on a fanction site (I think it’s a fanfiction site) called AO3 for a while before it was self published! Regardless, I’m so glad I picked it up… And I’m glad it’s being picked up traditionally too!
I can admit, and you can tell from the first paragraph, that as a lover of the TikTok series I am likely biased towards this book. And I can’t help it, I had such a good time reading it – finding out how some of my favourite characters came to be what we know them as now. I was able to fall in love with Lily and Bel as separate beings before they became a couple, I was able to really appreciate just how broken some of these characters were at the start… And I had my heart torn apart, I giggled, I hugged my kindle because it was the closest I could get to hugging some of these characters… And had a good time.
Now, was it perfect? Not for me. For Whom the Belle Tolls has some sexy chapters, and for me some just went on too long (I love some spice in my books! But I’m not here for the spice… if that makes sense) and that made me a bit uncomfortable. That’s probably a me thing! But there we go. But some of the chapters were beautifully written (that funeral… IYKYK) and I am so damn grateful that this story exists in a written format.
I finished the book and it felt like coming home. I imediately dove into a rewatch of Hell’s Belles and have been enjoying that rewatch ever since – even though I know not all of the happenings of this prequel were thought out at the time the series started, but that is totally forgiven).
As I said, I had a lovely time – it was a fun read and I experienced many emotions! I’m very happy to rate this a 4.5 stars! I know it won’t be for everyone, but if you do love the TikTok series, I have no doubt that you’d love the book too.
“Grief isn’t linear. There’s no formula to it, and sometimes you feel guilty for feeling or not feeling a certain way. That’s okay.”
Reading With Tyler 
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