Startup Hell

A book I’ve been looking forward to all year is Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis. When her boss summons a demon and promptly dies, Morgan suddenly has a problem on her hands. But both she and Lucareoth (Luke) are just trying to meet their respective sales quotas, and he’s now stuck on her plane, so Morgan agrees to help him out. They only need to find a suitably bad and desperate person to sign a deal, allowing Luke to get back home. But as the weeks pass and new issues emerge, Morgan and Luke have a lot more work cut out for them, and not just at the tech startup where she works. Then there are the romantic feelings developing between them. How can they save their souls and keep their jobs in the process?

What I Liked:

Hilarious. This whole book is so funny from start to finish! I found myself laughing out loud several times. Part of it is poking fun at corporate culture; some is about Morgan’s overly heightened sense of right and wrong; sometimes it’s just the way certain characters talk or react to strange events. This author’s sense of humor aligned perfectly with mine and I had so much fun reading this.
Workplace woes and devilish deals. The corporate world is known to be soul-sucking, and startups (especially tech startups) can be even worse. Here, instead of just trying to secure enough funding and find their ideal clients, the startup employees have to put up with an impossibly indecisive CEO who likes to randomly pivot every week, sometimes hours before a major presentation. How can anyone keep up? But making all this even more fun (and nerve-wracking!) are the nefarious deals with demons in order to save some souls… and damn some others in the process.
Morgan and Luke are just trying to keep up with their sales quotas. Sure, he’s a demon, but he’s only trying to make honest deals and keep his numbers up. Morgan may not be passionate about her job, and not even working in the department she’d prefer, but she needs to pay rent, so she does her best. I liked seeing two people who seem so different—a human and a demon—actually having a lot in common and connecting over their shared sales rep misery.
Personal relationships. From Morgan’s complicated relationship with her magical fighter mom, to her budding romance with Luke, to her surface-level interactions with her co-workers, there’s a variety of relationships represented here. Who does she hate enough to damn their soul? How can she fix the distance between her and her mom? Can/should she pursue anything with Luke?

Audiobook:

Megan Tusing does a marvelous job of narrating Startup Hell. Not only does she perfectly capture the humor and Morgan’s slightly anxious, kindhearted character, she also brings the other characters to life, too. I loved hearing their different voices and speaking styles, from the nice stoner bro to the very tipsy coworker at a company party. This voice acting was top-notch and really elevated the whole reading experience. What a perfectly done audiobook!

Final Thoughts

Startup Hell was a treat from start to finish. As someone who works at a (non-tech) startup focused on sales, certain parts of this really resonated with me. It was funny, smart, and absolutely memorable. I look forward to reading more from Caitlin Rozakis. I’m also excited to read books similar to this one, featuring demons, the workplace, and discussions of evil.

Special thanks to Titan Books, Tantor Media, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy Startup Hell here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis
Audiobook Narrator	Megan Tusing
Audience	Adult
Genre	Fantasy
Setting	New York
Number of Pages	432
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	May 19, 2026
Publisher	Titan Books

Official Summary

A hilarious contemporary fantasy about a junior sales witch stuck in corporate hell, who has to evade devilish pacts and her kickass, world-saving, demon-slaying mum to save a (surprisingly hot) demon, and work out how to hit her quarterly target.

Morgan Blackwater’s mother is a kickass, world-saving, demon-slaying Shadow Council wizard. As for Morgan? Morgan’s a junior salesperson at a tech startup that can’t even decide what its product is. But with magic dyslexia and a disinclination to kick ass, Morgan is doing her best carving out a niche for herself in the mundane world.

Leaving work late one night, she discovers her boss dead from the effort of summoning a demon to trade his soul in order to make his quarterly target. The disturbingly-attractive demon, Lucareoth (Luke for short), is trapped here until he finds someone to sell their soul. While trying to sneak Luke out of the building, Morgan runs into her infamous mother. Apparently, someone has been summoning demons and she’s here to get to the bottom of it.

Trying to protect Luke from her mother, Morgan gets sucked into the Infernal Plane and discovers hell really is a corporate nightmare. She only gets back home with a promise to deliver a human soul of her own. While her coworkers are really annoying, she’s not willing to sacrifice their souls. The company’s tech bro CEO, though, is another story.

With Caitlin Rozakis’s signature wit, STARTUP HELL is a contemporary fantasy that exposes the demonic nature of the corporate world.

About the Author

Credit: Laura Bang

New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Rozakis writes fantasy with a satirical twist and a cozy heart. Her debut novel Dreadful turned out not to be dreadful at all. Her Everyday Enchantments series include standalones The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association and Startup Hell (coming from Titan Books on May 19).

She also writes romance under the name Catherine Beck; her novella “Leah’s Perfect Christmas” was adapted into the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Leah’s Perfect Gift.”

Short stories have appeared under the name R. Rozakis in Cast of Wonders, Aurealis, Daily Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Weirdbook, as well as the anthologies Substitution Cipher, Clockwork Chaos, Baker Street Irregulars II, and Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022.

Caitlin Rozakis is the pen name of Rebecca Rozakis. After graduating from Princeton, she has had too many career changes, including mechanical engineering (cut short after the murderous robot incident), finance (amortizing tequila receivables is not as fun as drinking tequila), and the American Museum of Natural History (who knew emus had birth certificates?), and a number of marketing positions, some at companies you may have even heard of. She lives in Jersey City with her husband and son.