Review: The Mephisto Mark by Trinity Faegan

Published: September 24th 2013 by Pink Publishing
FYI BTW: E-Book • 333 pages • Series Goodreads Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2

Orphaned at six and sent to live with abusive relatives in Bucharest, Mariah learned early in life to box up violent, agonizing memories and put them in permanent mental storage. Now almost nineteen, she has a paying job, a tiny apartment, and a plan to attend university. She loves her independence and is steadily overcoming her past, but when an enigmatic stranger walks into the pub where she works and the trajectory of her life changes yet again, she begins to wonder if she’ll run out of mental shelf space.

(Read more on Goodreads.)

Now you may remember me mentioning The Mephisto Covenant series before. In fact, one of my favorites of 2013 turned out to be The Mephisto Kiss, the sequel to The Mephisto Covenant. Now just a little disclaimer about me—I'm all about giving books a second chance, specifically books in a series where the potential to grow is always there. That's how it was with my first taste of Faegan's world; it definitely could've been much better, but I saw the possibilities it could pull off should Faegan improve on what I deemed to be flaws. So when I read The Mephisto Kiss, I was incredibly glad that I sat down one random evening to give it a chance and was dazzled by how much more depth Faegan created, and the attachments developed for these agonized sons of the dark angel Mephistopheles.

I just love saying his name. Mephistopheles.



The Good, The Bad, and The Non-Spoilery: If you've never read The Mephisto Covenant, it's about the six remaining sons of Mephistopheles (^^) who, due to questionable parentage to say the least, in order to earn passage into Heaven and gain God's favor must find love in a specific kind of a woman—known as Anabo, these women are descended from the first daughter of Adam and Eve and carry with them the purest of souls despite the darkness of the world around them, and so will be unafraid of being among the enigmatic, dangerous, arguably demonic Mephisto brothers. Should they love they will also know a peace that has eluded them for the thousand years they've already lived.

Now what I've loved about this series to this point is that the love lives of the six brothers are both at the center of the books and not all at once. Despite the fact that each of them have been unknowingly waiting for these promised soulmates, they've got other things going on as the hit squad working for both sides to stop the world from ending. But more than that, they're all carrying around a lot of emotional damage and pressure and old resentments that these could almost be very much character-driven stories, which huzzah!

I love that their romances are as equally hard as the lives they already lead. While the attraction is very much instant, the love takes a while to bloom, and when it comes to the point where they can love beyond themselves, it's cleansing for each brother and pretty damn beautiful. This particular installment focuses on Phoenix and the Anabo he definitely doesn't want to meet called Mariah, whom I loved so very much. You see, Phoenix harbors a horde of guilt for a tragic past where selfishness and many mistakes were at play. His tragic flaw is that selfishness so that even his guilt stems from self-pity no matter how much he thinks otherwise, and so it's no wonder it takes he and Mariah so long to work up to where I was dying to lead them my own self. He has so much growing to do at the beginning and because it's real, because it's true it takes a while for him to get there.

These books are about redemption, forgiveness, and self-growth, and therein lay the beauty, the glimpse of which I caught a couple years ago. And at the core of all those things is a driving need to maintain a family, and each of the brothers, the women they bring in, and the ones who watch over them—see: most BAMF butler, housekeeper, and cook ever—are very much a part of and committed to the family they've managed to salvage in spite of all the tragedies that have befallen them.

It's impossible to remain unaffected by these brothers, each their own person with their own quirks and flaws and jokes and badassery. (I'm sorry but BROMANCE makes the top of my must-have-in-reading list.) And while I was extremely sad that Faegan had a setback with her publisher, she's managed to come through and deliver a fairly phenomenal follow-up to the game-changing Mephisto Kiss and so I'm ANYTHING BUT sad now. I'm actually refreshing the goodreads page for The Mephisto Code and waiting for more info to miraculously appear. Yeah, I expect no judgement.

M came close and bent to gently stroke her hair. I watched in stunned disbelief. Not since our mother died had I seen my father express anything close to affection.
Her soul must have recognized who he was because she looked up at him with relief and whispered, "I'm ready to go."
"It's not your time," he murmured.
She leaned her head into his hand and closed her eyes. "He came back."
"No, he's never coming back."
"Promise?"
"I promise." He moved his hand across her face and she instantly went to sleep, her head falling against my shoulder.

*dies* *sobs* THIS SCENE. Mariah is so wounded that she inspires a shred of warmth in even the most damned of souls. *sobs again*

And there are tons of others but this is the least spoilery, I think, and one of the most moving.

I bought my e-book copy off of Amazon for $3.99. Prices may vary over time.