Book Recommendation

Love, Laugh, Lich

by Kate Prior

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Love, Laugh, Lich is the first installment of the Claws & Cubicles series, and it completely stole my reliquary—I mean, heart. First of all, the situation is absolutely hilarious: a lich takes over the realm, instituting an Evil Dominion o'er all, and yet… people still go to work! There are office jobs! Lily, the human protagonist and the lich's personal assistant, complains about a lack of PTO and shitty severance packages alongside the virgin sacrifices that the Lich Lord demands! It's wild and utterly ridiculous and I truly enjoyed every moment of the sheer incongruity of it all. Look at this quote:

[The lich is] pacing the lower inner level of the Sanctum, the ritual floor. It's drawn up in runes and incantation circles, with all his most-used ingredients lined up near the edges, and an altar for sacrifices in the center.

And there's the initiative to bring more women in the STEM fields. That's Sneakiness, Traumatization, Evil Studies, and Misfortune, I trail off…

It's so corny and silly that I can't help but love it. It feels like corporate D&D with the absurdity of the setting, almost, but with an office romance twist. This is one of those books where I learned almost nothing about the FMC outside of her interactions with the love interest, but I was weirdly okay with it because the setup was so outlandish and fun. Anyway, I truly did enjoy Lily as a protagonist. Usually I don't jive much with first person POV, but I liked Lily's. She is, of course, rather disconnected from reality and potentially crazy—it's not wanting to jump a lich's bones (ha) that makes me say so, but the fact that she has a continent-sized crush on her boss and agrees to sleep with him for work. FOR WORK! Girl…

Janice, Lily's best friend and the company's HR manager, is the voice of reason here (and potentially the FMC of the next installment of this series) but she is sadly—or perhaps happily?—ignored by Lily in favor of Soven (the lich) and his trifecta of cocks. You heard me right: trifecta. Soven has three dicks (one of them dedicated to clitoral stimulation) and he isn't afraid to use them. Lily is a big fan, as am I. Soven is also a bit of a dork, which is super endearing given that he has enough undead magical power to (probably) level a city block without breaking a sweat.

I actually liked the conflict in this little novella. You can read the entire story in a few hours, but it feels appropriately sized—not too grand, but also not cramped. The story was (to quote Goldilocks) just right for what it was trying to do. The fact that sleeping with one's boss is generally considered a bad idea all around, even in the real world, was acknowledged heartily—Lily agonizes over her feelings and Soven's feelings and what the boundary is between work and a relationship and honestly it's a whole mess of emotions that ordinarily I would find tedious… but because the novella is so short, the miscommunication and pining and angst didn't get drawn out even close to the border of my patience, and I had a great time.

The ending is very cute and a definite HEA that I found very sweet without being cavity-inducing in its intensity. The sex scenes were fun and varied, and as someone who prefers more lavish, drawn-out sex scenes I was reasonably satiated with these. Overall, Love, Laugh, Lich was a great, funny rom-com, and I'm looking forward to picking up the next book in the series as soon as my next paycheck comes in.

You can buy this book on Amazon Kindle if you so desire.

Have you read Love, Laugh, Lich? Do you want to? If you have any questions or thoughts about the book, feel free to leave a comment in the box down below!