The Devil’s Guide To Managing Difficult People

by Robyn Bennis

I met the devil at a Motel 6, poolside.

The devil—call her Dee—followed Jordan home, and decided to keep her. Now, while Dee claims to be helping get her life in order, Jordan has to live with a houseguest who complains constantly, eats all her pudding, and can incinerate her in a pillar of hellfire.

It’s super awkward.

Genres: Humor, Fiction

257 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 21, 2019

About the author

Growing up, while her friends went to the beach and learned vital social skills, Robyn had her nose in a book or her eyes on a PBS special. After all, what kind of wrong-headed dolt would want to waste their time partying, when Marty Stouffer is about to talk about water shrews? When Ai and Estraven are braving the frozen wastes of Gethen? When Alex and his droogs are… You know, that time she probably should have gone to the beach.

Now she spends her days working in biotech and her nights thinking up new curse words to adequately describe how horrible people are. Having met with limited success in either endeavor, she vents her frustrations through crime, yelling at clouds, and writing.

Reviews

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

We join our extremely unreliable narrator Jordan as she's returning to Boston from a trip out of state. While she's traveling she picks up an initially friendly, but increasingly annoying, tag-along named Dee who introduces herself as the Devil. Jordan is a fairly awful person, and her life is enough of a trash-fire that having the Devil take an interest isn't that much of a downturn. In all sorts of ways she's been living with devils for years; it's all just a lot more literal now.

The merry way that Dee torments Jordan while Jordan basically holds her own against Dee's cheerful machinations makes this an absolutely hilarious book. What makes it even more interesting is the gradual unfolding of Jordan's damage and why Dee's involvement in her life isn't out of place. Laugh out loud funny, with the dark undercurrent of someone in pain. Granted, Dee does not help matters in that regard.

So why two stars?

For me it's the ending, and I can't talk too much about it without spoiling the hell out of it, but ultimately while I feel Jordan's story was mostly resolved, I never got a clear understanding of what Dee was actually doing in her life.

In brief: We discover that Jordan's mother is in the Wailing Wood, where Dante had the location of suicides in Hell, and that the book had been Jordan telling the story too her up to that point. So the central point of the book is Jordan forgiving her mother for her various faults, strongly hinting that Jordan's issues with her mother were at the core of her life and her issues in the book.

Where I have a problem though, is where does Dee come in? Why is Jordan a VIP in hell? Why are Jordan's completely understandable sins so bad? Without any of this addressed I find myself more than a bit frustrated.

[Chris Everson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short book... just over 200 pages long, and 120 pages in it was a 5-star, no doubt about it, and then it just lost it's way. Badly.

It concerns a woman in crisis, Jordan Laing and her meeting with the Devil (who is a woman who prefers to be called Dee), and the resulting events from this meeting.

It started so well. The repartee was razor sharp between the two and events barrelled along, both funny and surprising. Then, around 2/3 of the way through, for me, it lost it's way. It felt as though the author didn't know what to do, and had exhausted the snarky comments... which became more and more laboured and repetetive.

The plot changed tack completely, and while many readers seemed to like it, for me it deemed like a deux ex machina... in fact many of them. The author even references this herself once. Readers seemed to like it as it gave them 'feels'... to quote many of them verbatim. For me it did the exact opposite. I stopped caring about the main character... or the devil. In fact, every character seemed like an asshole. The last 30 pages just went on and on and on. When it finally finished I was underwhelmed, So many hanging threads... which might have been the point, but it didn't make me any happier.

It could have been so good, and I'm sad as it was a missed opportunity. I do feel as a male, I may not be it's target audience though.

Three stars overall. 5 for the first half and 1 for the second. I've never seen a book change so much for me in content and quality. It's certainly a page turner and I finished it quickly. Would I recommend it? I really have no idea.

[Zig Claybourne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've watched the TV series "Lucifer" you may have seen the throwaway funny bit when our devilish rake--in a dream sequence--has grown his horns and is about to enjoy a stupendous boff, telling a potential lover to grab his love handles. All right. "The Devil's Guide to Managing Difficult People" isn't a throwaway. It aims for your brain, heart, and smirk-bone for the long haul. Bennis, whose novels and essays have made her one of my automatic-buy authors, merges humor and pathos so well Emo Phillips is likely cursing in admiration somewhere. Even at the story's most outlandish it's utterly believable and--for such a sharp laugh of a book--satisfyingly emotional. By the time you get to the end of this novella you'll clearly realize we all have difficult people in our lives. Most of the time, it's us.

[Edward Ashton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally different genre and topic, but this book actually reminded me a bit of Scalzi's Redshirts. The original premise is fun bordering on silly, but about half-way through you realize there's a lot more depth here than you'd expected, and in the end it gets you right in the feels. This one is definitely worth your time.

[Wayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. The main character was extremely unpleasant and spoke insultingly to the reader*. This was quite off-putting for me.

The last few chapters were pretty unexpected and probably made the book worth reading for me.



Non-spoiler spoilers below.

At the end, you discover she's relating her story to another character and not the reader. It kind of makes sense for her to be so insulting, but for most of the book it feels like she's speaking harshly to the reader. It definitely distanced me pretty quickly.

[Tina Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens and Palahniuk’s Damned. Robyn Bennis writes with wit and dripping sarcasm about living with the Devil, both literally and metaphorically. But behind the humor and outrageous circumstances the MC finds herself in, there is a deeper emotional thread that is the heart of the book. Life is about making hard choices even when we try to run away from them.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Read the ARC). Highly entertaining humorous dark fantasy with a modern twist. Jordan is a deeply relatable protagonist and I found myself rooting for her through mishaps and screwups. Dee is possibly the most relatable Satan since Bulgakov. Recommended!

[Garrett Calcaterra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't laughed this hard reading a book in a long time. I literally laughed out loud on a crowded commuter train while reading (and elicited a lot of dirty looks in the process). Beneath the cutting dialogue and irreverent wit, there's some weighty substance to the story, too. Three thumbs up!

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, until it wasn’t

Cleverly witty writing, with great bits of sarcastic banter. I would have ended it 30 pages sooner, as some of the end seemed suited to wander as if in search of a suitable close.

[Christina D.Z.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not at good as her sci-fi stuff, but still a fun read.
Full review here:
http://www.dzamarie.com/blog/the-devi...

[Ken Feucht · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. It's clever and laugh out loud funny. The story is at its worst when the plot starts getting in the way of the narrator interacting with the devil.

[S.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

HILARIOUS! This is a wonderful romp full of terrible people learning to let go of the past and try to be better people. I highly recommend it.

[donnalennon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd book

Odd book probably as good as Dante 's Inferno . The airship novels were great so I brought this one. Maybe l well just stick to those.

[Jordan Ramirez Puckett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hidden in this novela is a really good short story. Unfortunately it gets dragged out over about 200 pages and the voice of the narrator and the style of humor just gets tiresome. I was glad that by the end of the book, she clarifies who the narrator was talking to, but at that point I was so eager to finish I just didn't care.