All Travis Pritzker is interested in is passing his Statistics class, even if he has to seduce his nerdy professor to do it. Easy peasy, right?
As it turns out, wrong.
Because Dr. Foster is no longer Dr. Foster. Aliens have invaded and are taking over the human race while looking for other tasty humans to snack on.
Saving the world will take a Christmas miracle. Also tentacles, fried chicken, a passing grade, more tentacles, vintage Christmas specials, an octopus, and decorating gone wild.
As it turns out, humans are way more fun alive. Who knew?
This was one crazy, fun, over the top, wild, laugh out loud ride, and I loved it! Parts of this story were hot, parts were totally relatable, most was just outlandishly funny and totally unrealistic (we hope), but it ended up being a fast, fun, festive read.
I read the synopsis and was intrigued. I've never read anything by Lynn Van Dorn, but the book was short, so I thought I'd give it a go. The first page had a frat boy footballer puking in the bushes and I thought, this book will not be for me, but .... then I started laughing and I didn't stop until the epilogue ... when I cried.
This is book 7 of the Tinsel and Tentacles series. The mpreg is only briefly mentioned at the end.
I've had a rough time of it lately with this series. The last two installments were quite bad. I wasn't expecting much from this story from yet another author I'd never heard of.
Boy was I WRONG!
This author is AMAZING. Travis is in college and dangerously close to losing his football scholarship over his poor statistics grade. He's willing to do anything, yes anything, to bring that grade up. Even trade sexual favors with his stat professor Dr. Foster. But Dr. Foster has been acting weird lately, and he doesn't look like his usual sickly unkempt beanpole of a man. He actually looks...hot. Travis is starting to think he might enjoy this quid pro quo when he finds out Dr. Foster is not inhabited by an alien who craves flesh...and not the kind Travis would like.
I loved everything about this book. Travis is snarky and funny. Dr. Foster "Chuck" is hilarious in his deadpan sorta way. The plot, while basic, propels the reader along, and is helped by fabulous and funny dialogue. The is super sweet and I found myself with a case of the warm and fuzzies at the end. My only complaint is I found it too short. I wanted more.
Now I need to track down more by this author because if this is any indication as to the quality of her work I need to read it all!
College footballer Travis Pritzker is desperate to pass his Stats course and offers his professor sexual favours in return for a passing grade. The small hitch in the plan is that Professor Charles Foster has been taken over by ‘Chuck’, one of the alien invaders who are hellbent on making a meal out of unsuspecting humans. Although Travis is bad at Stats, he can tell something is wrong with Professor Foster, but that doesn’t stop him making the offer which turns out to be beneficial for all involved.
Although this was short and spicy (128 pp, just over 2.25 audio hrs), it was also a lot of fun. We get the dual narrative from Travis and Chuck’s point of view and it’s highly entertaining. Chuck has the ability to rearrange atoms and he’s turned an older saggy professor into a stud with tentacles. The romance storyline borders on being sweet at times, although there isn’t a lot of Christmas (more a passing nod towards the end), but in general this is just a hilarious alien / human romp with some great jokes. Not to be taken seriously. 🎧 Michael Ferraiuolo is always great with comedic narrations, his voices and comic timing is perfect—he really does an excellent job here!
What a silly and delightfully dirty little Christmas goody!
Travis needs to get an A to keep his scholarship. When he offers a quid pro quo to his professor that would ensure that A, he’s surprised to find that there’s more to Dr. Charles Foster than he ever could ever imagine! “Chuck,” who now inhabits Dr. Foster’s physical body, is certain he’s only keeping Travis around until he’s matured enough to be eaten. But then Chuck didn’t count on Travis showing him how much fun humans can have.
There’s definitely “Resident Alien” vibes here. For those who know the show, it’s not too hard to make the leap to having a lunkhead like Travis in the picture. And then there’s the tentacle sex, the chicken, and all the Christmas Feels.
This series and its titles are kind of crazy. Plus it's bringing the amount of alien books I've read quite quickly.
Honestly, you cannot take this book too seriously. There's some concerning power dynamics but once you're past that, it does not take itself seriously. It doesn't get too deep in the systems, you're here for tentacle smut and that is what you'll get. It's very cliché aliens as well. In the sense that you have that stilted alien speech where they do not fully understand colloquial slang even though they have direct access to memories of it. Again, don't think too hard about it.
In the end, if an alien invasion happens, I can only hope it'll be like this one because damn. That would be the best case scenario.
This story crosses all the lines. Having sex with a professor for a grade. Alien/human sex. Full adult/young adult relationship.
To be honest, I didn't find either guy sympathetic. Their relationship seems to be based entirely on sex. The sex was fun, and it was short. The conflict was pretty mild.
I don’t care what anyone says, this was AWESOME! I freaking loved it. Professor Alien pod person meets junky jock in need of a better grade… love ensues! It was funny and quirky, crazy HOT and freakishly sweet too! One of my favorite holiday shorts of 2024 so far.
I didn’t know what to expect and this ended up being way better than I imagined! “Chuck” was such a mess but I guess I should be glad he discovered chicken and kept Travis. I definitely wouldn’t mind more of these aliens lol.
The title pretty much tells you what to expect from this story. What it doesn't say is that it's actually heartwarming AND hilarious. It was surprising how much holiday joy I felt while reading this book.
Yes, there is frat boy humor in this book. Yes, the whole premise of this book is wild. However, if you were looking for a scifi classic with this book, I don't know what to tell you.
This book was so fun to read and the two men who end up falling in love have a whole lot of tentacle loving. The smut is smutting with this book and if you wanted to see all the tentacles go everywhere, then this is the one for you.
There is some character development but it isn't too deep. However, you do get a sense of who these two men are and what their motives are.
Definitely something different for the holiday season.
No Rating! I picked up this audiobook almost impulsively. It was part of Tinsel & Tentacles 2.0, clocked in at under two and a half hours, and was narrated by Michael Ferraiuolo—three factors that usually guarantee at least a fun, low-commitment listen for me. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a mistake.
Right from the beginning, the premise lost me completely. The story opens with the main character propositioning his professor for sex in exchange for better grades, while it is casually established that this professor regularly sleeps with members of the football team. This was, quite frankly, the ultimate ick for me. I actively avoid professor/student dynamics because I cannot get past the ethical implications, and this book leaned into that discomfort rather than challenging or subverting it. Had this been framed as a genuine romance with emotional development, I might have—and that’s a very generous might—been able to tolerate it. Instead, it read as transactional erotica built entirely around “sex for grades,” which is not something I can engage with.
Things only deteriorated further. The reveal that “Chuck,” the alien pod person, has taken over Professor Charles’s body—while Charles’s consciousness remains present—was another hard no. The idea that the original character is still aware and present during intimate scenes made the entire experience deeply uncomfortable for me. I do not read MM+ stories, and I strongly dislike shared-body or possession-based dynamics in romance or erotica. To me, it feels like a narrative shortcut rather than a meaningful exploration of identity or connection. There are rare exceptions where this trope works, but only when the writing makes the characters feel like facets of a single being rather than two distinct entities trapped together (à la A Sea of Endless Light by Chani Lynn Feener). That was not the case here.
As if that weren’t enough, the epilogue introduces mpreg seemingly out of nowhere, despite earlier establishing that the species involved cannot procreate together. This contradiction felt careless and undermined any remaining suspension of disbelief I had left.
On the audiobook side, Michael Ferraiuolo’s narration was great. He did what he could with the material, but strong narration can only carry a story so far—and in this case, not nearly far enough.
Ultimately, this audiobook was simply not a good match for my personal tastes. The premise, character dynamics, and narrative choices consistently conflicted with my reading preferences, which made it difficult for me to fully engage with the story. While I can see how certain readers might enjoy the themes and tropes presented, they did not work for me. The short runtime and competent narration helped me finish it, but they were not enough to change my overall impression. This is one of those cases where the book wasn’t objectively bad—it just wasn’t the right fit for me.
It's so astonishingly stupid that it's fun. The dialogue is bad. The narration is rife with clichés. The book cover is dank. The story itself reeks of a Wattpad left-over erotica reheated and re-served in a book.
5 stars because stupid fun is better than just stupid.