For Whom the Belle Tolls

For Whom the Belle Tolls (2024) is a novel by Jaysea Lynn. Reminiscent of Opal Reyne’s Duskwalker Brides, Lynn’s narrative traces the journey of Lily, a recently dead mortal whose soul finds the Afterlife, and Bel, one of the six demon princes of Hell. Together, the two work to find their own sliver of happiness and healing in the Afterlife through a customer service job, personal paradises, and brimstone. The novel explores The Experience of Religious Trauma and Healing, The Importance of Self-Determination, and The Supportive Dynamics of a Chosen Family.

Originally the prequel to Lynn’s TikTok comedy-drama series, Hell’s Belles, the book is now the first installment of what will be a trilogy of the same series name. Finding fame and widespread readership through social media, For Whom the Belle Tolls follows the newly popular romantasy genre, where romantic conventions intertwine with fantasy-style worldbuilding.

This guide is based on the self-published e-book edition, published on December 20, 2024.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include depictions of illness, child abuse (including child sexual abuse), death by suicide, self-harm, sexual abuse, graphic violence, and sexual content.  

Plot Summary

At 34 years old, Lily never believed she would be diagnosed with terminal cancer. Within the span of a year, however, her health deteriorates, and she dies peacefully in her family home. Her soul journeys on and arrives in the Celestial Lobby of the Afterlife, where she is told she can choose to be judged by the Universe or a belief system of her choice to determine whether she’s earned her Paradise or her place in Hell. Nervous and dearly hoping she’s done enough good in her life, Lily opts to undergo Judgment by the Universe’s moral standards. When she passes, she emerges beyond an archway into her personal paradise, where her perfect home awaits her.

It isn’t long, however, before Lily becomes curious and explores the vast expanse of the Afterlife, navigating the Universal hallway and arriving, out of curiosity and sheer spite against her Evangelical upbringing, in Hell as a free mortal soul. There, Lily quickly befriends the demons, who bear no resemblance to the stereotypical depictions of her childhood, and offers to help them with the complaining mortal souls who’ve been assigned to Hell. With their assistance, Lily sets up the tongue-in-cheek Hellp Desk, a customer service desk through which Lily hears the souls’ grievances and ushers them to their designated Level of punishment. Given that she worked a customer service job for years while alive, Lily is exceptionally efficient in dealing with mortal souls’ complaints and quickly smooths out the processing procedure for newly assigned souls.

Impressed, the demons invite Lily to join their Invaders game, an online role-playing game wherein humans attempt to colonize Mars, but among them are invaders who seek to kill them. The first night they play together, Lily encounters a player whose voice is unbearably attractive and whose sense of humor perfectly aligns with her own. Bel, the prince of Hell playing the game under the username FruitBat, becomes fast friends with Lily and dubs her his “nerd wife.” For weeks, they play their game without knowing the other’s identity, but one day, Lucifer intervenes. After he introduces him to Lily, he tricks Bel into encountering Lily while she is in the midst of dispensing her own brand of justice on an evil mortal soul who tried to swindle his way out of Hell.

Enraptured by her fighting form, Bel introduces himself. At the sight of him, Lily is likewise heavily attracted to him. They begin socializing, attending trivia nights together or conniving against other players in their online game. When she visits him at his office and discovers that Bel is a prince, Lily learns of the psychological scars Bel has because of his father’s choice to meet the Void. For once, Lily finds herself reciprocating with her own vulnerabilities about her cancer and her feelings of abandoning her family by dying.

One day, as Lily is meeting a friend from the Celestial Lobby, she encounters Sharkie, a young girl whose trauma at the hands of religious representatives echoes Lily’s own painful childhood. Sharkie latches onto Lily as a safe guardian, and they begin living together. As Sharkie relearns what it means to be family and to feel safe in one’s home, Lily and Bel continue to grow closer, and their feelings for one another become stronger.

With the help of Afterlife goddesses and some careful planning, Lily seduces Bel at their next trivia game, but while she proves successful, the dynamics of their relationship remain uncertain, since Lily wishes to reincarnate. Sharkie, meanwhile, is learning how to be curious and childlike once more, as she attends school with demon children. She begins to rely on Lily for support, and the two of them decide they are a family with Bel.

Simultaneously, another Universe has begun sending scouting parties to determine the best invasion strategy to steal power from Lily and Bel’s Universe. As a general of 85 legions, Bel is often sent to the front to deal with the threat, but each time, the invaders grow more powerful and more reckless. Twice, Bel returns to Lily and Sharkie, battered and bruised after brutal battles, and he finds that he, too, sees the two of them as his family. When Lily and Sharkie are introduced to Bel’s large family, grief strikes Lily as she knows she will never know the experience of being a biological mother if she stays in the Afterlife.

Amid a flight with Bel, Lily realizes she’s in love with him and owes him the whole truth of herself. She vows to show him her soul file, but Bel beats her to it, as he opens up about his father, Samael, and the abandonment he felt when he decided to meet the Void rather than remain with Bel. Lily then shares her soul file, which contains every instance of her life, and Bel witnesses the psychological abuse and sexual assault she endured, the hardships she had at home, and the resilience she has had to show to survive as authentically herself. Awed, the two become further in love with each other.

War has been declared, and Bel is called to the warfront to lead the Afterlife’s defenses. For weeks, both Lily and Sharkie are without news. After nearly three months, Lily feels an oddity she can’t quite understand. Perturbed, she tells Sharkie to remain at home. Bel, meanwhile, is fighting against an onslaught of creatures from the other Universe, and as they rampage, he is quickly overcome. As Lily progresses through the Universal Hall, her odd feeling persists until she hears the cry of a foreign creature. She quickly guides others to run, but when the creature runs after her, Lily hides in the first realm she finds—Heaven. There, she faces off with a second creature before cutting its head with the sword Bel gave her.

Alone with God, she deplores his inaction against the people who hurt her and Sharkie in his name. Contrite, God apologizes, and Lily realizes that if she can recognize that demons are different from mortal teachings, she can accept that God isn’t the omniscient being she was taught to believe he was. Though she accepts his apology, she does not forgive him. She leaves to search for Sharkie, and later, Lucifer calls her to say they’ve found Bel.

Bel is in critical condition, but through the help of healers, he is fully recovered in little more than a week. A funeral is organized for all the fallen soldiers, and as the whole of the Afterlife grieves, Bel finds it in himself to finally accept his father’s title as prince of Hell as his own and leads the customary song at the funeral. Just as Lily reflects on her decision to stay in the Afterlife with Bel and Sharkie despite the loss of her dream of having a biological child, Bel’s friend and fellow prince of Hell, Lev, provides Lily with a loophole: If she rescinds her right to reincarnation and applies for deification, she may become a denizen of the Afterworld and could conceive a child. Elated, Lily runs to the Office of Reincarnation without informing Bel, which leads to many misunderstandings. When they reunite and she tells him the happy news, they kiss. The Universe chooses that moment to deify her, and with Bel and Sharkie at her side, she feels at home.