***Thanks to the publisher for the e-ARC on NetGalley!***
This is a DNF for me at 28% and I’m going to explain why.
Maybe I’m not cut out for cozy romances. I don’t understand the boundaries the subgenre works in. A lot of stuff keeps getting brushed off like a cutesy moment that I would like them to address. But they don’t.
The FMC (Luna, yes she has a moon name) is a rich socialite from Los Angeles, engaged, and just wants to be taken seriously by her father (who is the CEO of their family company). She attends a work conference in Alaska, and on her way back to the airport, she winds up stuck in a monster-friendly town, Claw Haven, until the snow thaws.
The MMC (Oliver) is the owner of the only hotel in town and a werewolf who can’t shift. Except that part is a secret he’s somehow keeping from his extremely close-knit family who live in the hotel with him. His grandmother is the current alpha and he’s the next in line.
When Oliver accidentally drinks a magical werewolf bonding potion and Luna also drinks the random potion laying around thinking it’s alcohol, they are essentially werewolf married.
You do kind of have to go along with the story because no one’s really explaining how any of this works. And there is some magical divorce flower that can annul this but there’s a shortage and isn’t easily obtained of course. The premise is kind of cute? Who doesn’t like an accidental marriage?
I will say a pro for this book for me is that the publisher’s cover is really good and what initially attracted me to this book in the first place, and I don’t usually go for illustrated covers. The prose is also super easy to read.
However. We do need to talk about the fact that Luna is STILL ENGAGED. To her human fiancé, Hector. The thing is, he’s super chill and NICE. Everything just kind of rolls off him so maybe he’s too chill. Because we conveniently find out that him and Luna have an open relationship arrangement and she hooks up with other guys, and their whole thing is that they talk about it and they don’t fall in love with other people. RIGHT AFTER we find this out, Luna immediately jumps into bed with Oliver.
The bond they have pains them when they’re too far apart from one another and in other books, I think this premise could be super sexy. Except the entire time at the back of my mind, I keep wanting Luna to hurry up and break up with her fiancé. This would be easier to accept if Hector was awful, but he’s not. And I’m supposed to believe Oliver is so okay and believes Luna when she confesses she’s in an open relationship that he hears that and immediately has sex with her when not even an hour earlier they were arguing and haven’t known each other for 24 hours?
This all just happens SO fast. The sex scene here at the start is explicit but not entirely sensual in my opinion, but it happened. I’m not a fan of how this came about and how fast they got together. But YMMV.
I like grumpy Oliver because there’s an explanation to why he is the way he is now. And I was a fan of Luna until the throwaway line that’s totally not needed about her (accidentally) throwing out her college boyfriend’s grandfather’s ashes just because she’s vapid enough to want a vase for flowers she got herself celebrating her HALF birthday. My goodness. She doesn’t reflect on this or seem to feel bad about this at all. But this does make me hate her quite a bit.
I know this is an ARC, so maybe the version uploaded to NetGalley contains the previous self-published text and not the newly edited text because I hope this gets removed. It’s not needed and really chilled me on the character from that moment on.
Other edits I would expect to see is Los Angeles abbreviated as “L.A.” rather than the “LA” in this ARC because they don’t mean Louisiana. And also, if there’s no cell service and Luna didn’t download any offline maps, how did she navigate and find reviews on this Claw Haven hotel in the middle of nowhere? Makes no sense.
The ensemble of characters around town are actually pretty interesting, although there’s really no explanation how things work. Admittedly, the rest of the book could explain it and I just haven’t gotten to that part yet.
You have “monsters” like the werewolves who can shift between human and wolf forms. But then you also have a dragon and a hedgehog who are human sized but fully LOOK like what they are with wings, tails, scales, quills, muzzles, and all. It’s confusing. Maybe this is a norm in monster romances? I don’t know. I am not familiar. Most shifter books are characters that are either in human form or not. I’ve never read the ones being in monster form 24/7. I thought everyone would be vegan as a result but, no, they eat steak. So what are the world building rules? What is an animal you can eat vs what is not? I simply do not know.
The characters are nice and I like them. I assume the rest of the series takes place here in Claw Haven. This is a small town and they are busybodies but they mean well.
The book is easy enough to read. It is in dual alternating POVs and third-person past tense. I think readers who yearn for a cozy paranormal monster romance could really love this if the open relationship aspect of the FMC’s character is something the reader can overlook. It’s something I can go with in a dark romance because the “other guy” is usually terrible but poor Hector here is too nice and I don’t love the vibes the story leaves me with because it makes it impossibly hard to root for Luna and Oliver together as a result.