So as a caveat to this review (in case y'all don't know me on here yet) - I would just like to say that I consider myself to be a pretty open minded, book-curious individual. And listen, I don't wanna be that person but... I'm gonna be that person. It wasn't totally what I expected, but in a way it also was?

The good: listen, 🐙 was 👍 I felt like the scenes utilizing the shapeshifting and concepts of tentacles were relatively thoughtout and interesting tbh. Fun and intriguing for sure, and not as overwhelming or 😟 - so there is that.

The meh: The characters/world had potential! I liked the idea of the people, and their roles, the concept of the world itself (the business side of paranormal life always tickles me), a prosex bathhouse, etc. ...but I had a hard time sometimes knowing the difference between Rose and Gideon- their internal narration often seemed to be the same voice- and I also felt like his being this 'ancient immortal being' didn't fully come through because of the limitations of the writing 🫤. I also wasn't a huge fan of the "omg instant love" pacing and like how FAST things progress for them. Like woooaah-nelly, slow your roll a bit.

The bad: I don't even know why I'm harping (pun intended) on this but I gotta- when an author sets up a story with plot, and character backstories and personalities, (rather than just like straight up 🌶️) I feel like if they are going to go through all the effort, it has to be enjoyable and engaging to me. This story fell victim to a lot of "telling not showing" and I often felt like I was at a lecture with all the random exposition and explaining that was going on. Many missed opportunities to just fully immerse us into this world and experience what the characters did rather than just having a few lines here or there describing what happened off page. It sometimes became redundant as well. I often felt myself sorta just skimming it or feeling like it was assuming my intelligence as a reader was lower or not as intuitively able to pick up subtle cues between the characters. I also just don't like when intimacy and kink is written as SO on the nose and blatant- like they can have the kink and whatnot, but why are they literally saying it and defining it every single step of the way literally using the exact terminology over and over again? It kinda took me out of the book and felt like maybe it was for an "entry level" explanation on the topic.....Which just isn't really what I'm looking for in escapism media. I think constant, open communication etc is awesome, but it still just felt like Too Much and not in an organic way that made sense to the characters.

So am I glad I read this? Well yeah, I mean- it was an interesting first foray into the monster fker genre, but I'm hoping that there is better out there 🫡