You are condemned.
Condemned to travel a highway on the road to hell, where an eternity of torments awaits you. An outlook that is hardly encouraging, no doubt.
But there’s a problem. Or, come to think of it, an advantage. Because you shouldn’t be there.
You’ve spent your life being sensible, prudent, and far too cautious to do anything that crosses what’s considered right. So no. Hell doesn’t seem like the place you deserve.
And to whom would you explain it? Because, let’s be honest, understanding isn’t exactly among the virtues of its inhabitants. They are demons. And these beings, as we know well, don’t usually grant favors without expecting something in return.
So you end up sharing a car with a guy who seems suspiciously familiar and slightly attractive — emphasis on the latter — after you’ve wrecked your only means of transportation the moment you arrived. All of this while you try to figure out what the hell you’re doing there.
Welcome to Condemned: The Love of My Death.
María R. G., winner of the 2025 Fandom Books Award with this novel, offers a paranormal romantic comedy that turns the road to hell into a journey as ridiculous as it is entertaining. And she does so with a premise that constantly toys with our expectations: what happens when someone who has followed the rules all their life ends up in a place reserved, in theory, for those who have broken them?
The author has a funny, light, and especially agile voice. The chapters, very brief, stamp a dizzying rhythm on the reading and foster a sequence of situations that seem to compete to see which one is most terrifyingly absurd.
The demons deserve a separate mention. Irreverent, cheeky, and quite fond of complicating the condemned’s life, they turn the journey into an unpredictable experience. Their presence provides much of the humor, but also reminds that this hell, as picturesque as it may be, remains a dangerous place. A smile does not guarantee good intentions and a helping hand can hide a trap.
The novel also leans on a device beloved by readers of young adult romantic comedy: forced proximity. Sharing a car during a trip from which neither can escape provides the perfect backdrop for barbs, misunderstandings, and that living-together dynamic that compels two strangers to get to know each other far more than they had planned.
The author weaves romance into an adventure that hardly leaves time to catch your breath. The relationship unfolds amid danger, unexpected encounters, and revelations, without the main plot being relegated to the background. Humor serves to ease the tension, while the latent mystery introduces questions that prevent reducing everything to a sequence of comic scenes.
The construction of her particular underworld is striking. The author takes Dante’s Hell as a reference, reinterpreting it through a 1990s aesthetic and with clear echoes of Supernatural, the series starring the Winchester brothers. The result is a setting with its own personality, where the ordinary and the demonic coexist with a disconcerting naturalness.
The novel also began in a way very different from the previous ones.
María, who also holds an Imagin-Neo Award and is accustomed to planning her books meticulously with outlines, decided to let herself be carried by a story that seemed to demand to be written more than it did to be structured. And it wasn’t until roughly halfway through the manuscript that she paused to flesh out the world in greater detail and establish its rules. First came the fun; then, the need to bring order to that hell.
This helps to explain part of the spontaneous character of Condemned: the urge to play with its characters, to complicate their path and take the situations a little further than expected. That blend of easygoing, adventure, and an emotional undercurrent that gains presence without abandoning the humorous tone is one of its great strengths.
There is also room for more sensitive moments. Beneath the jokes and the demonic threats lie questions about appearances, decisions, and what we think we know about ourselves.
Condemned: The Love of My Death demonstrates that an eternity of punishment can also become the setting for a romantic, wild, and surprisingly endearing story.
After all, being condemned does not necessarily mean that all is lost.
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Author: María R. G.. Title: Condemned: The Love of My Death. Publisher: Fandom Books.