Review of The Mephisto Covenant by Trinity Faegen

Title/Author: The Mephisto Covenant (The Mephisto Covenant #1) by Trinity Faegen
Publisher/Date published: Egmont USA, September 27th 2011
How I got this book: my parents gave it to me for Christmas last year.

Goodreads summary: Sasha is desperate to find out who murdered her father. When getting the answer means pledging her soul to Eryx, she unlocks a secret that puts her in grave danger - she is an Anabo, a daughter of Eve, and Eryx's biggest threat.
A son of Hell, immortal, and bound to Earth forever, Jax looks for redemption in the Mephisto Covenant - God's promise he will find peace in the love of an Anabo. After a thousand years, he's finally found the girl he's been searching for: Sasha.
With the threat of Eryx always looming, Jax knows he has to keep Sasha safe and win her over. But can he? Will Sasha love him and give up her mortal life?

This is a hard book for me to review. I REALLY wanted to love it, but I didn't. And I kinda hate that I didn't love it. I have SO much love for this cover, it's not even funny, I'm just a bit disappointed that for me the story didn't live up to it.

I was pretty intrigued by the whole Mephisto thing and how these boys could get their redemption by finding a girl to love them unconditionally. That's a pretty nice concept. But the whole explanation behind Anabo and Mephisto and everything left me feeling confused. Sometimes it was like I should just know more about this stuff from the way it was mentioned in the story, except we hadn't gotten that part of the explanation yet. Which kinda annoyed me, cause I kept wondering if I'd missed something.

I did appreciate that while religion is obviously a big part of the story, it doesn't get shoved down your throat and it doesn't get preachy. This can majorly put me off and I was pretty happy with how it was handled here.

Another thing that bothered me was that there was some insta-'I can't imagine my life without you' going on' and it felt mostly based on lust and the fact that Jax knew Sasha was Anabo. Aside from Sasha constantly landing in trouble and Jax getting her out of it, I didn't really feel like they got to know each other at all, so the falling in love felt superficial to me.

Also, I was kinda annoyed that while Sasha was ready to turn away from God and pledge her soul to Eryx to find out who killed her father, after that she doesn't do anything to discover who was responsible for it, which seemed off to me. I also really wanted Sasha to grow a spine and stand up to people who were treating her horribly, instead of needing to get some of Jax's anger management issues through kissing him for this to happen.

Having said all this, I must also say that I did enjoy the book. While I wasn't really big on the romance, I did FEEL the emotions Jax was going through, I felt his despair because he believed Sasha would never love him. And the world Jax lives in it pretty intriguing, so I had fun exploring that. I'm also wondering which brother will get his redemption in the next book.

So while I had issues with this book, it still ended up being an enjoyable read and I'm sticking with the series to see where it'll lead us next.

My rating: 3 stars