I saw Monster’s Mate by Anne Hale and Celeste King randomly while browsing for my next read and thought you know what? Why not! Why not pick this up since I typically need a no thought predictable fun book to read as a palate cleanser between ‘heavier’ things. I still want to get into monster romances despite that wild disappointment that was Honeysuckles by January Rayne and looking at the cover, I figured okay this’ll do! I picked up the audiobook and got straight to it. Unfortunately “it” was continued disappointment.
First, the superficial. The narrators were good. I enjoyed their voices and they did as good as they could given the source material. They’re both narrators I think I’ll keep in mind in the future when deciding between written and spoken. That was the superficial positive. Now, the superficial negative. The monster in this romance? Looks absolutely NOTHING like the cover. There’s no wings. There’s no skull head. I don’t even think there were horns. It sounded like it was just a large man? with claws and shadow tentacles that come out when angry. I was WILDLY disappointed. I get not having the covers match exactly the protagonists in a book, but I think when you’re selling yourself as a monster romance and you’re showing a monster on the cover, having that monster look nothing like what he is in the story is a bait and switch. I felt cheated.
Now, let’s get into my deeper issues with the book. Moira is taken from her village and meant to be sold into slavery (though in retrospect, I’m a little confused because she mentioned having a dark elf master previously so like what happened? did she have a master AND work in her human village?). Monster Tanem is attracted to her scent but can’t understand why. He saves her and takes her back to her human village as she asked. While traveling back to that human village, Tanem regularly hunts and feeds Moira. They spend three days apart while she’s at her village before Tanem comes to visit. In those three days, she is eating smaller portions than usual because of reasons. Tanem sees her and is immediately concerned due to her weight loss. She also makes a fuss about how she doesn’t know how long she’ll survive and weight loss. I’m sorry what? She is eating smaller portions for three days and suddenly she’s visibly frail and withering? Have the authors never know people that fast? It’s so wildly ridiculous it completely took me out of the story and made me run ranting to a friend and fellow monstermance lover about the ludicrousness. After that, I simply couldn’t take anything else seriously. Moira wants to stay where she isn’t wanted. Tanem agrees because he’ll do whatever she wants. People keep trying to kill them (despite him supposed to be so strong and great?) Eventually they find their own way. Happily ever after. The plot just didn’t make a lot of sense and seemed to be so loosely held together that things like looking frail after three days of portion control is enough to knock it down. The spice? I mean, it was there but didn’t feel like anything much. It didn’t feel worthy of the monstermance genre.
Rating Monster’s Mate by Anne Hale and Celeste King at 1.5 stars (rounded up to 2 on GoodReads) is honestly better than I would other. I would not recommend this but I would recommend giving the narrators a listen. I am sure there has to be some good monster romance out there and maybe one day I will find it but it was not this day and it was not Monster’s Mate.
