Reviewer Comments: Be careful what you wish for is the theme of this story. Lucy Burns made a pact with the devil and now she carries out his wishes, although she now wishes for some other things in life. She has very few friends and what she tells people about herself varies from person to person. Each year on her birthday she receives a gift, eternal youth, Teddy Nightingale albums or some such gift, but she is not allowed anything relationship based. Lucy can sleep with all the men she wants but she can never have a boyfriend, if she does start to get serious, she pucks. The good part for her is that she has a great body and will never grow old, although that also begins to lack appeal.
Throughout the story Lucy does have a twinge of conscience but it is more for herself than for others and it is through this twinge of conscience that she decides she wants a normal life. At a concert by Teddy Nightingale, Lucy finds out how she can be relieved of her job as facilitator and sets her plans on a faster track particularly after she meets Luke Marshall. Lucy has to find 54 evil souls to meet their deaths early and find her replacement. She also has to entice one target, a person of good character.
Luke Marshall is a blind man and a lecturer at the university. He is considered hot but, as he is blind, he has no idea of his appeal. He first meets Lucy when she is totally drunk and has urinated on herself. Regardless of this, he pursues her through whichever means he can. Lucy is accused of selecting him as her partner as he is not perfect and is unable to see her faults.
This story focuses mainly on Lucy and her job or wanting to be relieved of her job. Luke plays a minor role in this as the transformation was beginning before she met him. There is humor and spark in the relationship and enough for the reader to know that Lucy is in this for the longest time. As a reader there was just the normal connection between Lucy and Luke and it is not until the epilogue that I felt a depth of emotion between them.
This story is fairly straightforward and predictable for the reader with no unexpected outcomes or red herrings to make you think. What I find difficult in some stories is when characters, even given the amount of life-changing experiences they have been through, never seem to change, or it is minimal at best and this may leave a character feeling a little flat and unattractive. This description seems to suit Lucy at many times in the story.
