Wraithful Reads

For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn was my first read of the year and it has just set me up right for the rest of 2025. I’m already planning to reread this again soon, because this book was just everything I love in a story and needed to read. Comforting, funny, wholesome, and heartfelt all in one. For her debut novel, Lynn has created a rich world. It has so many relatable and multi-faceted characters. It has love and spice, and grief and forgiveness. It’s already become one of my favourite books of the year, if not of all time. You can feel the passion and love Lynn has for this story in every word she’s written.

Lily is dead. As the blurb states: “They told her to go to Hell. She went, but on her own terms.” The book follows Lily’s journey into the afterlife, coming to terms with parts of her life and her death. And finding the love she always craved with a Prince of Hell along the way, Lily creates her own family through him and her newly adopted daughter, Sharkie. She helps to defend her home and the new relationships she’s formed in the afterlife, and creates her own unique Hellp Desk to assist the demons of Hell too.

“Our first thoughts about a situation are seldom what we actually believe. They are what we have been conditioned to think, or sometimes they truly are random spits of consciousness. But our second thoughts, ah, that is where we are. It has helped me, working in this position, to forgive myself for my terrible first thoughts, and to pay more attention to my second thoughts”

– Jaysea Lynn, For Whom The Belle Tolls

Unlike others, I’d only watched the Hell’s Belles skits on TikTok and hadn’t read any of the chapters on AO3 or Patreon, where this book started off. So, I went into the story a little blind. And I absolutely loved it. For two days I couldn’t put it down. I laughed, I cried, got goosebumps, and even felt it heal me in little ways I hadn’t realised I needed. Warm, funny, and deeply comforting, I couldn’t recommend this book more highly.

For a debut novel it’s actually pretty long at 699 pages too, however, I didn’t feel like I was reading almost 700 pages. I flew through this story over two days, I was so hooked. As a fantasy reader, I’m pretty used to longer novels anyway, but the pacing in this story is excellent, the world-building and lore is engaging without being overwhelming, and the characters are wonderful. Part of me hopes that Jaysea’s vision of the afterlife is what awaits us all when we’re done here.

Some tropes I enjoyed in this book:

• A sentient house named Carlton
• Chosen family
• Great communication between characters (absolutely no long drawn-out conflicts that could have been easily remedied with one conversation)
• Healing and growth
• Living life to the full even after death

Lynn also provides many trigger warnings for this book. It covers a wide range of sensitive topics, some of which are more touched upon than others, but the more sensitive topics are handled quite gently and with respect in my opinion:

• Religious trauma
• Terminal illness
• Death, Suicide, and Grief
• War, Gore, Battle, and serious injuries
• Child abuse
• Sexual assault
• Many explicit (but extremely consensual) sex scenes.

And I have to say, If you’re a fan of wings and tails in your spice, you’ll definitely enjoy the sex scenes.

I’m hoping for many more books to follow in this series, to cover the other characters and story arcs we’ve seen in the Hell’s Belles skits. I’ve absolutely fallen more in love with the characters and the world. I was already in love with them from the skits but this has just built on it even more!

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