Charming Devil

Charming Devil is a paranormal, southern gothic retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Dorian, instead of destroying the painting and dying, continues on, living multiple lifetimes of debauchery.

After more than a century of excesses, Dorian's portrait has absorbed as much of his destructive habits as it can handle and it is beginning to decay. In desperation, Dorian searches for the last remaining descendant of the original painter (who was Dorian's first love), in hopes that he can commission a new, fresh portrait and continue living.

Baz Allard is an artist who happens to be exactly who Dorian is looking for. Unfortunately for him, she knows the power that her bloodline holds and refuses to ever create a portrait of a real person. In desperation he offers her tons of money and a period of time living large on his dime while he tries to convince her. She agrees to his gambit, thinking she can convince him to finally accept his mortality. But Dorian and Baz are both stubborn to a fault...

Over the course of the story, Rebecca Kenney manages to make Dorian, who starts out as a handsome, spoiled brat that is drinking, smoking, doping and fucking his way through his long, long life, into an fascinating love interest. And since this is a paranormal, southern gothic story too, there's a deliciously creepy subplot that looks like it will carry on to future books in the series.

In the lead-up to the release of Charming Devil, I have seen several complaints from people saying they won't ever read it because Dorian ends up with a woman and that's somehow erasing the queerness of the original story. In this retelling, Dorian is blatantly, obviously and proudly bi/pan. The book opens with Dorian waking up in bed with a dude after a drug fueled orgy, FFS, and Basil, the original painter of the portrait was Dorian's first love. So to the people who have preemptively written off this retelling because "it's not queer because Baz is a woman", ditch your bi/pan-phobia, because this story is still queer AF.