All that meant that when I saw the beautiful, pulpy cover of The Devil She Knows—the two women face to face in the lift, one with horns, complete with a triple-entendre (“Going down?”)—I couldn’t resist. I signed the contract in blood, without reading any of the fine print.

The book reminded me less of Bedazzled and more of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I didn’t enjoy The Midnight Library nearly as much as some of Haig’s other work, but fortunately The Devil She Knows is a bit more complex (and a lot less repetitive). Each of Hannah’s wishes transports her to an alternate universe where she and her girlfriend are still together. But the wishes granted by Daphne aren’t twisted or ironic. Instead, each of them brings Hannah closer and closer to a realisation that the reader experienced on page one—Hannah’s girlfriend is not at all right for her. But this is supposed to be a romance. If the love of Hannah’s life isn’t her ex, then who is?

Could it be the demon?

I didn’t think the story would go there, firstly because it would be such a bold narrative choice, and secondly because Hannah and Daphne didn’t seem to have much chemistry. So when the story did go there, I was delighted, but more intellectually than emotionally. The beginning is great, and the ending, too, along with most of the middle. But it does feel like a crucial chapter has been removed—the chapter where the heroine develops feelings for the love interest, feelings that are ignored, then suppressed, then frustrated. Instead, Hannah goes straight from pining after her ex to making out with Daphne. (I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler.)

A brief digression. You might wonder, who am I to even criticise a lesbian romance novel? For that matter, what business do I have reading one? The short answers are “no-one, really” and “probably none”. I’m not going to pretend I could have written this book anywhere near as well as Bellefleur did. But as a straight man who likes love stories, it can be tricky to find something that suits me. Romance novels are typically written for an audience of heterosexual women, which is totally fine, but it means my emotional reaction is often not quite what the author might have intended. Sometimes the male lead strikes me as a bit thin or cliched, in a way that might not bother a female reader quite as much. Sometimes he behaves badly in a way that I find hard to forgive (harder than the heroine finds it, at any rate). Sometimes his body is objectified in a way that the reader is clearly supposed to find sexy but I just find depressing. (And yes, I’m aware that women have had to put up with the male gaze in art as long as there have been male artists).

By way of example, I haven’t read Me Before You, but I saw the movie. (This is a digression upon my digression. A subclause in the contract.) The heroine finds herself caring for a former banker who’s tetraplegic after a motorcycle accident. He’s dismissive to her, sometimes rude, even cruel. But he’s handsome, and also very rich, so the heroine is inspired to look beyond his meanness, and sees the tortured soul underneath. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, is able-bodied, but is not wealthy or handsome. He makes time for her, and he’s never rude, but he’s not good at picking up cues (e.g. he doesn’t notice any of her subtle hints that she’s not as passionate about marathon running as he is). When he gives her a small gold necklace for her birthday, she’s underwhelmed—only to be promptly overwhelmed by a much more expensive gift from the former banker (a pair of limited edition socks she mentioned loving in her childhood). The boyfriend is crestfallen. She soon leaves him for the rich guy.

Might her boyfriend have secretly had a tortured soul, too? Well, maybe, but who cares? He’s poor, and a bit ugly.

Again, it’s fine to write this sort of thing, and it’s also fine to read it. People should be allowed to like what they like! Art exists, in part, to give us a break from taking things seriously. But I’m not aroused by the thought of being swept off my feet by a sexy millionnaire, and I therefore found it hard to ignore my sympathy for the abandoned boyfriend in Me Before You, who I strongly identified with. (I’m aware that my interpretation is problematic, too. Is the heroine supposed to force herself to love her boyfriend because his heart is technically in the right place? That’s some toxicity, right there. She owes him nothing. Let’s say I identified with him because he’s played by the guy who played Neville Longbottom, and I’ve always been a bit of a Neville Longbottom.)

OK, that was quite a long digression. The point is that I sometimes find myself reading lesbian romances, because I don’t end up getting distracted by the way the men are portrayed. Looking back, I’m not sure The Devil She Knows has a single male character. (Wait, hang on. There’s Hannah’s dad, and also Satan. But neither gets much page-time.)

Despite skipping the “falling in love” part, Bellefleur has written a terrific book. Watching Hannah waste wish after wish on her ex, drawing closer and closer to damnation over a woman who cares nothing for her, is deliciously agonising. I was instantly taken back to my teen years, when I watched a friend upend his whole life to chase a girl who I could tell wasn’t interested. (Then I was taken even further back, to when I was the one chasing an uninterested girl. And then there was the time a girl was chasing me, and then . . .) Like all the best genre fiction, the situation is highly exaggerated, yet painfully familiar. And the wordplay remains delightful throughout. (At one point, the thousand-year-old demon is described as having a bad case of “millenial burnout”, which tickled me.)