Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔 I felt like I didn’t know either well but really didn’t know anything about the heroine
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥
Humor: Just a touch
Perspective: first person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? slow to medium
When mains are first on page together: Not too long in – chapter 2 of 11
Cliffhanger: No this ends with a happily ever after for the mains
Epilogue: Yes, the first one is pretty soon after and then there’s another part that takes place later in the future
Format: listened to audiobook from library (Hoopla)
Why I chose this book: it was suggested on A Love Less Ordinary group on fb when asking about monster romance
Mains: This is a M/F relationship between a ‘monster’ ice giant hero and human heroine

Should I read in order?
This is the first of Fae’s Arranged Monster Mates series.

Basic plot:
Lucy is ready to sacrifice her life for her family and promises herself in marriage to Alrig

Give this a try if you want:
- futuristic earth setting...I think?? I wish the world building on this had been more developed. I don’t know what happened
- monster hero / human heroine
- arranged marriage – hero is an ice giant that pays for a bride/match and the heroine offers herself because the money goes to her family
- celibate hero – he’s had multiple relationships stolen from him
- big size difference – he’s way bigger and there’s a lot of ‘seeing movement’ inside her
- exhibitionism is an element in the first scene, breeding vibes
- shorter page count
- medium to high steam – 2ish full scenes in a shorter page count but the first scene is really long in comparison with the page count of the book

Ages:
- didn’t catch either

First line:
No one remembers the world before the shift.

My thoughts:
I saw this one my library hoopla and wanted to try but this one just didn’t work the best for me. I did like parts of it – like I liked both main characters. But most of the actual book and plot was just kinda...weird for me? It kind of gave you a bit of world building but not enough for me to understand or care really – I know it’s short so I wasn’t expecting like a lot of details but I was still disappointed in this aspect.

It also had some focuses that just didn’t do it for me – some things that will really work for others especially if you’re interested in breeding and size difference with a notice of how it affects the heroine’s body because it’s so LARGE. But that wasn’t really for me and I found myself just wanting to move on from this one.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: 6
Average rating from me: 4.17 stars
Favorite book: A Very Stalker Christmas

Cock/Hero Stats/World Building:

- this is like a...post invasion/apocalyptic kind of feeling Earth? I don’t really know what happened. There’s no proof or written text of ‘what happened before’ and it’s now a different plant.
- Virgins could get tested to see if they are compatible with monsters. If they are, the monsters pay a bride price to their family for the marriage
- Most of the females of the hero’s people don’t mate for life. There are way fewer females and they would usually have a baby and leave it with the father to go with another man
- They have a ‘virgin’ oil that makes penetration go smoothly
- broad shoulders and muscled, he looks hard with sharp edges, bluish gray skin and electric blue eyes
- his cock is blue and shaped like a bow, veiny with violet precum

Content warnings: (This should be taken as a minimum because I could have missed some!)

- I’m not sure what’s going on with the virgins only clause for marriages?? It wasn’t explained very well
- attempted sexual assault of the heroine
Author given content warnings: Didn’t hear any on audio

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

 
Safe sex: 

  No 

 
How’s the consent? 

  It’s...okay? Like there’s some fear elements and the heroine got married for money for her family...but overall she’s willing (I don’t think she loved the exhibitionism that was forced on her though) 

 
Pregnancy/children in story? 

  Children in the epilogue and breeding and children is kind of a focus 

 
26% (chapter 3) – 🔥 kisses, oral for her, fingering for her where you can see the movement inside her stomach, missionary – this is also an exhibitionism scene that is done in front of his two friends and evil relative to prove the marriage
92% (chapter 10) – 🔥 her on top sex in the hot springs