BBNYA Finalist 2025 Review: SOUL FRAUD

Hey bookworm friends. This is my last review for BBNYA 2025 finalists tour! Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts on a book that I had a very mixed experience with. I ended up giving it about three stars at the time which in my eyes is not a bad rating. I’ll just share my honest thoughts in the hopes that other people will like it more than I did and this book will find its readers 🖤. Here is my review for Soul Fraud!

About Soul Fraud

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Blurb

Matthew Carver has a terrible life. Seriously – it’s awful. It is so bad that Dan the Demon is shocked when Matt turns down his infernal offer: ten years of a blissful life in exchange for his soul.

But Dan is a salesman behind on his quota and his demonic managers are running out of patience. He forges Matt’s signature on the dotted line, stealing his soul and thrusting him into a supernatural world he never knew existed.

Now Matt must figure out how to get his soul back and stop a war before it is too late…

Purchase Links

⟡ Amazon US│Amazon UK│Amazon CA ⟡

Review

Soul Fraud’s premise captured my attention from the start; I love a good ‘deal with the devil’ story line but the detail of the forged signature sounded different and fun! I appreciate how something extremely strange happens to the MC but he immediately takes charge to see what he can do to solve his problem which keeps the momentum going. It was a fast paced action-adventure story and I was on the edge of my seat but I do think that overall it was too fast for my preferences. It’s basically action scene after fight scene and I think it would have benefited from some down-time. There are a lot of factions and characters and they get introduced far too quickly to have time to really appreciate how all the politics affect each other.

“This left me all alone in a dark house as the final barrier to a monster that was desperately trying to escape. Me. Little old human me. The one with the least experience with any of this Dungeons or Dragons stuff.”

The plot itself was entertaining and I liked the ‘fish out of water’ feeling of Matt discovering that all stories are real and learning about the supernatural world. I did find Matt to be a sympathetic character and I was invested in his troubles but as the story continued, he started to grate on my nerves a bit with his wise-guy comments. I realized the humour wasn’t for me. For example, during a moment of intense drama he wonders out of nowhere if he’ll ever see boobs again which entirely pulled me out of the story. He also continuously forced himself into dangerous situations even though he’s not at all prepared but then constantly complains that he’s not skilled enough or that he’s putting his life in danger. Buddy, you can’t have it both ways! I respect he’s trying to do his best given the wacky circumstances he’s in but it was just annoying.

“My butt clenched so hard under the onslaught of attention that I expected my next bowel movement to be diamonds.“

I feel quite torn about the characters in general, because I liked Dan the demon but we really don’t get to see much of him given that he sets the whole adventure into motion. I thought the interactions between Matt and Dan were the most fun, I was expecting for the book to have more of that. Hopefully there’s more in the rest of the series. Secondly, because Matt’s friends are affected by the demonic deal, they have zero agency and are like cardboard puppets which unfortunately makes too many of the side characters uninteresting. At least Orion and a funny gold Fae character made up for that a bit, as I enjoyed their antics.

The beginning started strong and the plot really grabbed my attention with some twists in the second half. But I didn’t love it all the way through. I do have several questions that are keeping me intrigued, but at the same time I don’t know if I want to continue the series. My opinion fluctuated so much while reading this book which kind of bums me out because I thought I was going to utterly love it. Ultimately the story is readable and propulsive if you’re looking for a quick adventurous read.

About Andrew Givler

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