Kate Fox’s new nov­el begins with a sur­pris­ing twist for a romance nov­el — Tem­pest Dunlap’s kiss is dead­ly because she’s a suc­cubus. Suc­cubus by Kate Fox heav­i­ly explores themes of moral­i­ty, self-sac­ri­fice, the intri­ca­cies of fam­i­ly dynam­ics, and the mag­ic that exists in our every­day world. The pro­tag­o­nist, Tem­pest, dis­cov­ers ear­ly in her ado­les­cence that every man she’s ever kissed has died, a shock­ing and deeply upset­ting truth that has Tem­pest swear­ing off romance for­ev­er. How­ev­er, this choice dooms her to a half life, in terms of her emo­tion­al health and in a very phys­i­cal way as with­out romance she becomes weak and sick­ly. To com­pen­sate for the destruc­tive nature of her pow­ers, Tem­pest works as a doula, home­schools her niece in sub­ur­bia, and con­stant­ly sac­ri­fices her own needs for roman­tic com­pan­ion­ship in ser­vice to what she views as the greater good. Tem­pest has accept­ed this denial of her pow­ers and shad­ow life as her fate until she meets Joel Tav, an attrac­tive, gen­uine, and kind per­son, whose broth­er was her last acci­den­tal vic­tim. As they grow clos­er, and explore the bounds of their rela­tion­ship, they each face chal­lenges and strug­gles over ques­tions of moral­i­ty, includ­ing Tempest’s con­tin­ued prac­tice of sac­ri­fic­ing her roman­tic needs in con­nec­tion to Joel. The romance between Tem­pest and Joel — and indeed even the ques­tion of hav­ing a romance — adds com­plex­i­ty to the char­ac­ters and enhances their emo­tion­al depth. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, through­out the sto­ry looms the threat of a vio­lent vig­i­lante who is killing peo­ple with dark pow­ers like Tempest’s. This ever-present dan­ger chal­lenges Tempest’s ideas of what it looks like and means to live a moral­ly good life, as it’s more cru­cial than ever to keep her pow­ers and her true self hid­den. As the toll on Tem­pest increas­es with all the strain and fear, she must nav­i­gate the bur­den of keep­ing her dead­ly secret from her fam­i­ly and her friends. 

There are many scenes in Suc­cubus that exam­ine the idea of fam­i­ly, delv­ing into the ten­sions between the fam­i­ly one is born into ver­sus the fam­i­ly one choos­es. For exam­ple, Tem­pest genet­i­cal­ly gets her pow­er from a father she nev­er knew and these abil­i­ties as a suc­cubus shape her entire life. But still her life is mold­ed by the many moments — small and large — that show the deep love she has for the fam­i­ly she has cho­sen, includ­ing her half sis­ter, her niece, and her close friend­ship with her online bud­dy, Grub. 

Tem­pest faces many choic­es through­out the nov­el that require per­son­al growth and the inten­tion­al choice between the dark­ness her pow­ers make her part of in con­trast with the fam­i­ly she can choose to be with, even though they don’t under­stand or even know about her pow­ers. Keep­ing this part of her iden­ti­ty hid­den to pre­serve her peace­ful life — even as it drains her — height­ens the stakes through­out the book. The super­nat­ur­al ele­ments of the sto­ry are paired expert­ly with relat­able moments with Tempest’s fam­i­ly, includ­ing her com­plex feel­ings about romance, that the read­er can appreciate.