Overview

Amazon blurb

Cassiel has given up the family tradition of demon hunting, leaving behind her sacred angelic duty and fated sword. What she can’t leave behind are the scars. To cope, she spends her days immersed in work, pouring all her attention into New Haven Books, her small bookstore and anchor in the new world she’s carved for herself.

But the past hasn’t let go of Cassiel yet. When a succubus named Avitue arrives to claim her angel-touched soul, Cassiel’s old hunter instincts flare, forcing her to choose between old knowledge and her truth. What should be a fatal seduction becomes a bargain neither woman expects. As they grow closer, Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family’s standards.

By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them. Falling for each other begins a path towards healing. But exorcising the effects of trauma is harder than naming it, and to explore the unfettered possibility Avitue represents, Cassiel must find a way to reclaim and redefine her angelic heritage.

iheartsapphfic blurb

Trust can be the most dangerous thing.

Nephilim—humans with direct lines to the angels—are natural demon hunters. All nephilim, it seems, except Cassiel. The weakest among a family touched by archangels, she’s abandoned her angelic inheritance for a mundane life as a bookseller. But even in the noise of the city, she remains burdened by the strict tenets of her old life. And recently, something far more sinister haunts her.

Avitue is a succubus out for revenge—though she has little say in the matter. As part of the greater demons’ plan to ruin Cassiel’s family for slaying a duke of Hell, Avitue’s been sent to claim a particular nephilim soul, one she’s told will pose little challenge. It should be an easy seduction. Quick, fatal. But Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family’s standards.

By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them, but as unwilling participants in an eternal war, trusting each other is the most dangerous thing they can do.

About Tamara Jerée

Tamara Jerée (they/them) is a graduate of the Purdue University MFA Program and the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Their short stories have appeared in the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthologies Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness and Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology. Their poem “goddess in forced repose” in Uncanny Magazine was nominated for the inaugural Ignyte Award. They’ve worked as a writer in the video games industry and as an indie bookseller. The Fall That Saved Us is their debut novel.