Review: Personal Demons (Megan Chase #1) by Stacia Kane

Personal Demons
Stacia Kane
Published: 2008
Purchase at: The Book Depository or Amazon

Rating (out of 5): 3.5 stars

Megan Chase is a hell of a psychologist. So much so that she was drafted to take up a side gig as a radio therapist. While her desire to keep a jerk colleague from landing the job in her stead was part of her motivation for accepting the on-air role, she also liked the idea of helping more people. At her core, Megan wants to save others.

Of course, doing so on a radio show can be hard when your boss is forcing you to ask each caller “how can I slay your personal demons?” and setting up reporters to tail the station’s new “demon slayer.”

Part of what makes Megan such a gifted counselor is that she’s a mind-reader, literally. When she drops her shields, she can slide into her patient’s mind and see the thing he is (or isn’t) describing. She tries to only use this skill to help those paying her to do so, but when she arrives home after a flustering first night on the radio to find a tall, chiseled man on her doorstep, she goes for the read. Only Megan can’t read him, and the look on his face says he knows it.

The mystery man is Greyson Dante, and Megan is convinced he’s some sort of lawyer. (Though, he never admits to it.) Eventually, he informs her that demons are real and, more importantly, alerts her that the subset of personal demons — those which encourage humans to do destructive acts — are out to get her. They took her show’s tagline seriously and now the word is out: End Dr. Megan Chase before she ends us.

Megan is thrown into a world she didn’t believe in, and set between two men she’s not sure she can trust. On the one side is the devastatingly handsome Greyson. He consistently protects Megan, including drumming up bodyguards for her, but she can tell he’s keeping things from her. The more she can see demons surrounding her, the more she knows she’s out of her league. On the other side is Brian, a reporter who is doing a “week in the life” story on the city’s new demon slayer. He’s a reporter. Megan hates that. She doesn’t want her life on the page, and Brian is just a bit too insightful. He culls old articles and finds Megan was suspected of murder as a teen. His new allegations make her wonder if he’s working for more than the newspaper.

On top of it all, the jerk colleague Megan so detests is convinced she’s agreed to work at his clinic with him. The longer she’s around him, the more terrifying he becomes. The flashes of death, her past and what lurks beneath her colleague’s eyes shake Megan.
She’d much rather handle things herself, but as things turn for the worse, she can’t help but accept help from those she didn’t know existed a mere week ago.

To sum it up (and keep it all spoiler-free): While it takes a bit to get attached to all the characters in Personal Demons, Stacia Kane does an excellent job crafting a series starter. By two-thirds of the way in, I already knew I’d be picking up the second novel in the Megan Chase series, Demon Inside. Also, I may just have to add Greyson Dante to my list of favorite male characters. Intriguing.