The Monster Botherer

      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 ...

  After a long grueling day of my fated mate listening to the song “Fighting Trousers” by Professor Elemental on what seemed to be repeat, I thought I’d take a leaf out of his book and focus in on some gaslamp monster romance. “A Polar Expedition: and Other Stimulating Research Opportunities” by Kass O’ Shire. A headstrong magical scientist wants to find the source of magic, much to her peer’s and superiors' chagrin, but she goes ahead anyway, trudging further and further into places she shouldn’t be. She’s being followed, tracked ,by a polar bear shifter who can’t bear (see what I did there?) to follow his strict orders, captivated by this little stubborn human who only wants to learn. Sirin (our female main character) is plump, nerdy and down to get dirty (in the field. She throws herself into her work, get your mind out of the gutter.) She also knows herself and has the confidence to reach for what she wants. While she has terrible things happen in her life, she doesn’t let it s...

    After stepping in and saving the world, the Fae have one request, that they are allowed to mate human women as female Fae are rare. A big ask, but yeah, I get it. Some humans have indicators in their blood that will allow the mating, and transformation into fae, to happen so it makes sense for a survival of the species kind of deal. However, quite a lot of humans find the idea offputting, so the “The Society” (leaders of the Fae) decide to make it more appealing and turn it all into a reality tv show. Suddenly, everyone loves the fae, and the world is watching as human women find their winged mates. “The Fae Batchelorette” is incredibly popular, but some older Fae men, the ones close to fading away because they haven’t met a mate yet, are a little too volatile. They need something rougher, something more aggressive so “The Society” decide to start a new show.  Molly’s time is up. She's been chosen to take part in the next series and she really doesn’t want to go. With...