The Monster Botherer

     When I read the word “cock” on page one of a book I know I’ve made the right choice. Kiss from the Basilisk is 100% monster smut with some romantasy padding so if you want castles, political drama and cum you can turn into a sex toy, this may be the book for you. Set in ye olden times Tem is a contender for the prince’s hand in marriage, but first she needs to be trained in the art of intimacy by a basilisk. Can’t have his royal highness have an inexperienced lover after all. While the other women all study hard to be top of the class, Tem finds her tutor, Caspen, a lot more captivating than she has any right to and once she starts learning, she strives to be a star pupil. As she falls for her basilisk, she also falls for the prince, making the whole situation messy, though very entertaining to read and you don’t really know who she’ll end up with until the last few pages. This delighted and bothered me in equal measure, I pride myself on guessing the outcome of roma...

        It is a common misconception that smut has to be crude, lewd and depraved. A lowest common denominator kind of read that holds no intellectual worth, that contributes nothing more than a cheap thrill. It’s not art, it’s not beautiful and it won’t hold you in its grasp past the fleeting moments of lust. Books like Untethering Dark by Desiree M Nicolli throw that idea right out the window with a look of “don’t darken my doorstep again”. We delve into Germany’s Black Forest (der Schwarzwald) and meet Astrid, a witch who is well on her way to attaining haghood. She lives by the forest’s rules and never forgets to leave out an offering for the creature that hunts every night. When some disrespectful tourists upset the offering, Astrid offers what’s left, delicious baked goods, and lo’ a relationship with the fearsome forest god is formed. Apparently you can fascinate an animal skull - faced, fanged and rather hirsute guy with some cookies, good to know.  What...

  If the Allied forces had dragons amongst their troops, I would imagine WW2 would have been a tad different, but alas, in this story they stay hidden and fly planes instead of scorching evil nazis and saving the world.  The Dragon at Midnight takes place in the aftermath of WW2, occupied Berlin. Gideon, our heroic dragon pilot meets Inga, a half starved eighteen year old who lives in a pile of rubble with her brother and some stray orphans. It’s love at first sight for him, she’s the only one he could ever possibly love. She is, understandably, very wary of all these occupying forces and tries to stay out of his way. Guess how well that works out for her.  After quite a bit of white knighting/love bombing (hey he’s an American pilot, he knows how to bomb) Inga falls hard and Gideon works out how to get her and the kids to safety (aka out of war torn Germany and back to the billionaire dragon ranch in the US). With some mild peril to get through first, you’re guaranteed a...

    It’s not often I spot a monster romance in the supermarket when I was just looking for some bread, but I did, so I bought it. I had to really, it’s a law I’m sure.  Look, the cover had a wolf on it and it’s called Mate. There was a bit of a Pavlov’s dog scenario at work here.  I admit at first it was nearly a DNF. It felt like a story I had read a million times before, characters I knew and I wanted something different, until it heard my inner thoughts and gave me exactly what I was looking for. I’m happy to be proved wrong, and perhaps we shouldn’t judge a book by the first couple of chapters. I’m so relieved I kept on chugging with this one.  Mate is a slow burn, fated mates but resisting, trauma dump of a tale that has no right to be as funny, as heart warming or as lovable as it is. Both of our main characters have seen some stuff, have lived through this stuff and use, in my opinion, the strongest coping tool in the world, dark humour and sarcasm. Even ...

      If you haven’t read the first book of this series “Blood of Hercules”, go do that. Seriously. If I can binge read it, forgetting to sleep, eat and sometimes breathe, then you can too. Plus, I can then tell you all about “Bonds” without having to worry too much about previous spoilers.  Stepping back into Mas’s greek inspired world was like getting home from a long day at work, slipping out of your clothes and getting comfy in pjs, but with a lot more pain, torture and despair. Yep, Alexis just doesn’t catch a break. even with two incredibly hot husbands, who she still doesn’t want but kind of does. It’s complicated. While book one had the overall theme of “surviving” Bonds focuses more on “getting shit done”. Yes her parents are all powerful deities, yes, she’s trapped in a bit of a messed up marriage and yes, the corruption of the gods in the grand scheme of things is a problem, but Alexis doesn’t back down from any of these issues, giving the impression that ...

    Described as a “deliciously dark gothic romance”, I was excited to delve into this book, and while the first few pages delivered what the description promised it shifted quite quickly. Throw away your  expectations and embrace the forever autumn vibes of 90’s supernatural tv shows such as Charmed, The Ghost Whisperer and even Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It even comes with aging witchy aunts! Maven, our female lead, forces herself to return to her home town after her grandmother passes, an obligation she hopes will be over quickly so she can escape to the city again, but when faced with her grandmother's missing body, old relationships rising from the dead and a suspected conspiracy, she has no choice but to stay and sort things out. Ronan Croft, Maven’s ex, has his own secrets to keep but can’t resist trying to worm his way back into her heart, the relationship perhaps not as dead as Maven hoped it was.  While it may not be my cup of tea I appreciate how Geissinge...

    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 ...

  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...