Welcome to THE MONSTER BOTHERER!

We are thrilled to welcome back Emma Penman, who exclusively reviews monster romance, and has returned for another week of Monster Bothering. We decided that as all her reviews have a specific aim, we’ll house them all in one handy feature-cage!

Whilst not necessarily bothering many monsters herself, Emma will be letting us know which monster romance books are worth bothering with…

Content warning: These books are usually explicit unless stated otherwise

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 feeling that Anna should be less of a cowbag to Frey. Their time bonding consisted of him cooking for her, then watching tv while she gets her hair played with and uses him as a big muscly pillow. She spends a lot of time, hopefully unaware, being utterly selfish, and perhaps taking advantage of his devotion to her.

Anna has a lot going on, I get it. From chronic pain to a toxic relationship with her mum, she’s been on the struggle bus for some time. However, the characterisation of her is just a smidge on the caustic side. She obviously has the hots for Frey but pushes him away every chance she can get, again understandable. Not everyone is into the instant devotion type of relationship he is pursuing. He, smitten from before he was turned back into his fleshy self, is obviously ott in his affections towards Anna, doing everything he can to help her, but he gets rejected again and again. It kind of feels like watching someone kick a puppy. She, of course, is absolutely allowed to say no to any advances but her responses seem cruel, when she is feeling feelings for him herself.

When they do finally get together it’s all sunshine and daisies, the bad guy, not vanquished, but staying quiet for now and everything’s great. Past issues are swept under the rug when a few doses of therapy might have been more helpful but they both seem content with their situation. Spice wise, well, it’s all a slow burn until the expected “third act breakup” and then they kissed, got laid and made up. My one criticism of monster romances that comes up again and again is that the spicy scenes contain nothing monstrous. If I wanted to read books with two humans getting it on, I would. Apart from a little reference to his claws (that could just be a guy who hasn’t trimmed his fingernails) it’s pretty vanilla. No tails, no real horn play (oh she did touch one slightly, which he liked) not even a weird looking dick! It’s like he isn’t a millennia-old gargoyle, just some dude she picked up at the bar. Again, the uncomfortable dynamic comes into play. He’s balls deep, uttering words of devotion, bearing his heart and she only gives sarcasm and sass back. It wouldn’t hurt her to be a little bit romantic. There are also a few mentions of toys, but not really that spicy, just there.

While Heartsong is well written, has a good secondary plot (the mystery) I can’t in good faith recommend it as a romance. I feel like the author didn’t really have any ideas on how to make the forced proximity trope work, so just had them doing the same thing every night, leading to a lot of filler with no real value. You always want your couple to have their “Happily Ever After” but for Anna and Frey, I’m not too sure. It felt more like a fated-mates gone wrong type of scenario, and I was rooting for the moment Frey realised he made a mistake and it was actually someone else that was his heartsong. Anna deserves the love, she deserves someone like Frey, but she needs to work on herself first, and I think that is strongly evident. Would not bother.