2.25 stars

Honestly this was a cute little novella that I ended up having some fun with and really enjoyed despite some hesitations due to the cover. Yes there were some instant love straight away, and so much of the dialogue was cringe but I feel like for a cheesy monster romance that is under 200 pages I could turn a blind eye to some of that because of the charm that this audiobook ended up having.

I feel like so much of the reason this wasn't rated higher is because a lot of the moments the characters found themselves in were just super strange and not really realistic - at least as realistic as you can get in a magical world filled with fantasy characters. Again because this was a novella so much was skipped over and idk I could ever forgive the author for the grandma having openly discussed sexual talk throughout this, but overall this was adorable and a quick little read to refresh the palette in-between reads.

1.75 stars

I feel like this was setup to be something that I would really like - a romantasy adventure with unlikeable main male lead and a slow burn, but I found myself just utterly disappointed.

I felt like so much of the world building was given just as throw away background information or was glossed over so quickly that I didn't really feel all that invested. In addition to that, so much of this story just felt like we were being edged along and nothing really happened? The ending of the story is almost no different then when we started with only a smidge more character growth from Valroy.

Abagail spends the whole book wondering the maze, but we don't really get much description of what this maze is even like? We get little snip-its and pockets of places that are just vague and bland. Just for the author to pop in the steamy moments with Valroy who doesn't really offer much. Literally by the 30-40% mark I was so tired of him threatening either sexual assault or death on her that I was almost BEGGING for some other form of distress which I feel like is really saying something. Then we have some of the character logic which is so out of it that it didn't make sense at all. How can you say that abducting someone, murdering their spouse, and threatening assault is not something that is a crime? And it seems as if the author is trying to pull you in to feel sorrow and empathy for Valroy when we don't really get much into him other than the base surface level "build a lead" stereotypes.

Then to top it all off that "slow burn" isn't really present, the character almost had instant lust from the very beginning and we get our first sexual scene what felt like pretty early on (though to be fair, it might be closer to 50% mark) which I guess is pretty typical for normal romance books but when you notice that this whole book has taken place over the course of maybe 2 weeks max it's not all that slow burn.

You can tell this book had some good thoughts and bones to build on, but I just wish the story was worked through better. I just wanted some variety, some authentic thought and instead the story just reads repetitive and frustratingly lacks in development.