Helfyre by Mariel Pomeroy
Would I Recommend: Yes
Read: 8/14-8/17/2025
I picked up Helfyre a few years ago thanks to an Instagram ad and much like every other book I buy, it sat on my TBR for a while. I bought this book before I truly became a romance reader. I was dabbling in it, teetering on the precipice of giving up horror for something I always thought less of. None of this is about Helfyre, it’s about me. This is my blog, after all.
Helfyre is a heaven/hell dark romance following Aheia, the light being, and Arioch, our “devil”. Aheia travels a long way to the world’s Hel to escape the hell of her home. She fears more of what she is coming from than what she may find in the demon’s territory.
The best parts of this novel are the world building and the main characters. The reader gets more of Aljira (hell) than the mortal plane or Keloseros, but that is also where the majority of the story takes place. Aheia escapes Keloseros for reasons that are leaked slowly throughout the novel to keep the reader hanging on and hung on I was. We crash face first into Arioch very early on and that dark demon is the stuff of every booktokker’s dream. A little too on the nose of every booktokker’s dream. Arioch is Pomeroy’s take on morally grey shadow daddy that we have seen many times.
I really like the lore but there are many side characters and many different races and it does become hard to follow at times. I wanted a key of all the main players and the information about their races like we had for the languages. There were also chapters from the POV of some of the side characters that I didn’t feel added to the story, they just complicated it further. I could ignore these parts and it wouldn’t change the story for me. If it is important to the sequel, I will have to circle back
I did enjoy this even though I felt like some of it was pulled from ACOTAR. The plot to spice of this book is very good. My preference is more plot than spice and this is a perfect balance. I would recommend it because the parts that are original are very good.
Rated: 3.5 ⭐ (rounded to 4 for Goodreads)
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