The Monster Botherer

    When you’re craving something sweet, head to the small-town monster romances. “Horn in My Side” gave me a bit of a toothache to tell you the truth, but it was kind of worth it. Jasmine is running the local pet store, cleaning out chimera pens and checking on the water filters in the kelpie tanks since the owner passed away, but when his handsome nephew comes to town with plans to sell the shop and be done with all the hassle that comes with it, Jasmine offers a deal. Give her 6 months to get the funds together to buy the shop herself. Since he can’t resist her big, soulful eyes he agrees, he doesn’t have any work to do at the moment, but is still pretty grumpy about the whole situation.  It’s generic, it’s formulaic, but sometimes that's just what the soul needs. There’s a comfort in knowing ahead of time that obviously he’ll fall first, of course they’ll end up running the shop together in a happily ever after and yeah, we guessed what was in that mysterious egg befo...

    This is one for all the Friday 13th fans that wished Jason would have a little bit more fun with the promiscuous camp counsellors. Slashers have never been wholly human, something monstrous lies within, which would explain why they keep getting better after being laid out in a morgue. The author takes this idea and lets the slasher be a whole new kind of monster, a “Hunter”. Physically human, but faster, sneakier, stabbier and has the whole “immortal” thing going for them, if they get killed all they need to do is bury themselves for an undetermined amount of time and they pop back up, fresh as a daisy and ready to do some more killing.  The story starts, as all good slasher movies do, at a summer camp. Sawyer (the hunter) has slaughtered his way through the camp and has cornered his final girl. He doesn’t want to kill her, he won’t kill her, he wants to do much much more to her instead. As he embraces his “perfect prey” he’s shot in the head by police and whisked awa...

      Anna has finally found her dream job working in a museum dedicated to gargoyles, a bit niche perhaps, but I see the appeal. She even has a crush on one of the “stone carvings”. During a robbery attempt she accidentally wakes her stony sweetheart and wouldn’t you know it, they’re fated mates. While Frey, our ancient gargoyle tries to convince Anna of this while simultaneously trying to woo the literal pants off her, she is running around trying to solve all the problems the world is throwing at her, especially the one that leaves a giant gargoyle frozen in her living room during daylight hours.  Heartsong is a mix of romance and mystery, with less lovey dovey stuff than I would expect from a “monster romance novel”. While the mystery was genuinely quite good, I didn’t see some of the twists coming, and certainly couldn’t work out who the “bad guy" was, the romance was hard to get through. I swung wildly from thinking Frey should back off a little, then onto feel...

  Just before we start, a little warning. “Feathers so Vicious” is a dark romantasy and includes some themes that may be upsetting to others. Your mental health is more important than reading a book (or a book review for that matter). Triggers include rape, miscarriage, bdsm/pain play, anal, MFM and child abuse. More info can be found on Liv Zander’s website.  Romantasy is absolutely a gateway drug to monster romance. We want our love interests a little beastlier, a little rougher than the perfect humanish offerings most romances give us. Dark romantasy pushes that even further, playing with the term monster out to its full potential. In “Feathers so Vicious” we are confronted by the physical kind and the emotional kind, and as the author so aptly states “What this book doesn’t contain is a hero, because villains do it so much better” and she’s quite right. There is a sense of absolute helplessness here, there is no one to really save the day. Only make it a little better. Gal...

  Eldritch Horrors are more my fated mate’s cup of tea, but I can never resist a monster, I welcome them in all shapes, sizes and sanity loss percentages. “The King in Red”, very heavily influenced by “The King in Yellow” by Robert W. Chambers, follows Jade, an introverted, studious and incredibly lonely twenty something college student as she discovers a discarded play in the student library, researches it, finds out it’s pretty much cursed and somehow killed a few people so reads it anyway. In her dreams, she meets “The King” and feels a connection. This continues for a week, with nightly self pleasure sessions after every meeting, she quickly becomes obsessed with this man from her dreams, despite the fact she’s never seen his face.  While the “curse” usually takes a week to kill off lesser mortals, Jade is still alive and kicking after the time frame, despite being entranced by those red lights she sees everywhere, but after falling asleep she is pulled into The King's wor...

  Don’t you hate it when you find your boyfriend cheating on you with your assistant and to cope you drown your sorrows and take advice from your rubber duck to buy a possibly haunted hot springs. Yeah me too.  When Sylvia arrives in Grizzlywood Springs she’s confronted with a dilapidated and outdated hot springs, a cutthroat competitor and an incubus who wants to help, as long as he gets something in return. Sylvia agrees, she can use all the help she can get. As Apollo fixes floors, teaches her to use her previously unknown about magic, conspires with abovementioned rubber duck (who Sylvia had turned into a tulpa without realising it) and “recharges” both their batteries with lots of lovely sex, the two grow closer and while the end goal of freeing Apollo from the hot springs grows closer, Sylvia finds that she doesn’t want to lose him.  Oh No! There’s an Incubus in my Hot Spring is a wholesome story, giving slight Twin Peaks vibes (which is never a bad thing) and very ...