The Demon Lover is a 2011 erotic fantasy novel by Juliet Dark, a pseudonym ("pen name") of award-winning American author Carol Goodman. The novel is the first installment of the Fairwick Trilogy, which centers on protagonist Callie McFay, a professor of gothic literature at the fictitious Fairwick College in upstate New York. Callie has a series of vivid erotic dreams which turn out to be the doing of an incubus--a type of demon distinguished by its tendency to have sex with sleeping women.
The novel bears certain basic similarities to Goodman's non-erotic novel, The Lake of Dead Languages, in which a Latin teacher returns to teach at a girls’ school in the Adirondacks. According to Goodman's website, it was "inspired by a year [she] spent living in the Adirondacks and also family trips to the Mohonk Mountain House", as well as by her own history of teaching Latin in New York state.
Booklist named The Demon Lover a top ten fantasy/science fiction book of 2012; however, the book received only mixed to moderately good reviews: Kirkus called it "steamy and nuanced, but ultimately a fairly predictable entrance into the already overcrowded paranormal romance genre." The book's sequels, titled The Angel Stone and The Water Witch, were published in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
