Kindle Edition Amazon Crystal Smith-Connelly, Playwright Createspace Category:  Humor Publisher: Createspace ISBN-10:  1482052113 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 174 Copyright: March 16, 2013 ISBN-13: 9781482052114 Price: $2.99 (eBook) This book contains nine plays about Satan, God, and the people close to them. Satan is sure that his overachieving son will run Hell someday, but his wife has a secret that may change everything. Jesus wants to quit his job to start a Christian metal band, and now it's up to God to find a new Messiah...but the person he has in mind doesn't want the job. Will God be able to find a suitable Messiah? Will Christian metal be as terrible as it sounds, or will Jesus take the music business by storm? Will Satan and Angel's relationship survive Angel's betrayal? You'll find answers to these questions and more (How did Judas end up with a courtroom TV show?) in Never Trust an Angel and Other Plays. This book is dedicated to Catherine Hicks and Tasha Lucia, two wonderful women who were taken from us too soon. One dollar from every copy of this book sold will be donated to the SC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in their honor. Excerpt Never Trust an Angel Setting: Hell, Satan and Angel’s kitchen. At rise: ANGEL, a blonde woman dressed all in white, places a basket of muffins on a table set for three. SATAN enters, wearing a black suit with a red shirt and carrying a briefcase. Satan sets the briefcase down and kisses Angel on the cheek. SATAN Good morning, Angel! ANGEL Good morning! Have some breakfast-I made your favorite. SATAN Blueberry muffins? ANGEL Yep-and this time I used an extra-special ingredient… SATAN Love? (Satan grabs a muffin and takes a big bite of it.) ANGEL You can’t put love in muffins, silly! SATAN It’s not worms again, is it? ANGEL No, I used cinnamon! Can you believe Hitler finally gave me his secret recipe? SATAN Do you really think you should be taking suggestions from Hitler? He’s the worst person here! ANGEL Oh, lighten up! He really mellowed out after he killed himself. Besides, it’s not like I got the recipe from Jeffrey Dahmer. SATAN I guess I should be thankful for that. ANGEL Although those chicken fingers he made were pretty good… SATAN That wasn’t chicken-didn’t you see the fingernails? ANGEL That’s funny, it tasted like chicken. (looking at the remaining muffin half on Satan’s plate) Aren’t you going to finish your muffin? SATAN I’m not really hungry. (Satan pushes his plate away.) SATAN Shouldn’t Johnny be up by now? ANGEL He’s just working on his homework. He’ll be down soon. SATAN Johnny never waits until the last minute to finish his homework. Is he okay? ANGEL It’s next week’s homework. SATAN I should’ve known… ANGEL Oh, before I forget, would you mind giving Johnny a ride to the high school Saturday morning? He’s retaking the SATs. SATAN Didn’t he get a 1590 the first time? ANGEL You know our Johnny won’t be happy with anything less than a perfect score. He really wants to get into a good college. SATAN But he’s going to Hell University-I built that school just so he would be able to continue his education close to home. ANGEL (hesitantly) Actually, I get the feeling that he wants to go to H.I.T. SATAN The Heavenly Institute of Technology? Where did you get that idea? ANGEL He told me. SATAN Well, it’s a good thing he’ll never get accepted because I do not want my son going to that college! ANGEL Look, I know you have your issues with God, but your son’s future is more important than some silly fight! SATAN Silly? He kicked me out of Heaven! ANGEL Well, you did lead a revolt against him…

Five Stars
Crystal Smith-Connelly is a jewel! I'm looking forward to watching her as she continues to shine!

Fun, easy read
This was really breezy and a whole lot of fun. Once I got past Satan being married to an Angel who lived with him in Hell, it was a real hoot.

In this series of plays, each play stands alone, but they all together form a bigger story. Angel is a tough, no nonsense wife, Satan is petulant, but not so much evil husband.

I was through it in just a couple sittings. The author's style is such that you wish you knew her in person -- she'd be a whole lot of fun!

An enjoyable read
Never Trust An Angel and Other Plays is the latest anthology of short plays from Crystal Smith-Connelly. Smith-Connelly is a talented playwright whose previous work, For I Am Zeus , I really enjoyed. This collection is a little harder for me to judge because I don't necessarily fit into her target audience with this one.

This collection of plays reexamines and looks to rediscover the God of the Bible and look at him, his Son, his enemy, and his followers in a humorous light. As a person of faith and a humorist, I was intrigued by this idea. And for the most part it worked. I wasn't as impressed by the overall work as I was by her previous work, simply because it seems to me at times the character of God comes across as Zeus from her previous work. I would have liked to have seen a little different character development there. However the characters of Jesus and Satan are well defined and make up for God. If the collection had focused more on these characters and less on the God/Zeus hybrid, I think I would have enjoyed this work a lot more and would have given it a higher rating.

Yes the play could be argued as being "sacrilegious" but I believe that God isn't just the creator of the world, but the creator of comedy and at times, we need to poke a little fun at ourselves. In one short play, Messiah Island, is a great look at two different kinds of people who are competing for the role of Messiah via reality television; the hyper-religious and the doing it for the fame. In my opinion, this is the strongest play out of the bunch because it deals directly with God and his followers, something I would have liked to have seen more from.

Overall, this is a strong work and one I would imagine works very well on the stage, I just wish that Smith-Connelly would have branched out a little more in her characterization of God and made him less Zeus like and Zeus-lite.