Night's Melody

Monsters & Mayhem

by Drake LaMarque

The opera house holds many secrets, but none are as frightening as the Opera Ghost.

Matthieu has harboured a crush on his best friend, Christophe, since they started dancing together in the Paris opera ballet troupe, but he's never acted on it.

When disaster strikes only hours before a gala performance, Christophe reveals a hidden talent for singing.

But where did he learn to hit such beautiful high notes? Why won't he tell his best friend who his singing tutor is? And what are those bruises he's covering up?

The rehearsals for their new opera are plagued with "accidents" and a dashing stranger who has a past connection with the beautiful Christophe disrupts their lives. To make matters worse, Matthieu seems to have attracted the attention of the Phantom of the Opera himself... but who is the man behind the mask? And why is he so very alluring?

The melody heard in the darkest part of the night is terrible, but beautiful as well.

Night's Melody is an MM horror retelling of the Phantom of the Opera, as part of the collaboration Monsters & Mayhem: An MM Horror Collection, adapting some of your favourite classic horror stories with an MM romance twist.

It is a standalone story, featuring accidents of a violent nature, overdramatic characters, BDSM, why choose/ MMMM scenes and some very intriguing chambers under the opera's stage floor.

Genres: M M Romance, Dark, Horror, Romance, Erotica, BDSM, Fantasy

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 17, 2022

About the author

I'm a genderqueer NB author, writing steamy MM paranormal romances
(They/them pronouns)

Reviews

[Megan [Jaded AF]]

MMMM Romance
Phantom Of The Opera Retelling & BDSM
2 Stars ⭐️

DNF @ 85%


I LOVE The Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber version) and when it was touring, I saw it twice at The Orpheum Theater in San Francisco when I was barely a teenager. It’s now in New York through 2023 and I would love to see it again. Everything about the production is just gorgeous and while reading this I kept wondering why I haven’t listened to this music for years. I’ve done myself a disservice.

The retelling of the story itself is almost identical to the original even including the character’s names although we have a few new characters too. Instead of Christine our usual heroine, we have Christophe, and there’s a new character, Matthieu, Christophe’s best friend. All the iconic moments of the original were there like the falling chandelier, the murders, the description of what was under the stage minus the sex chamber 😂 but I digress. I liked all of this but where this ultimately fell apart for me was the romance.

This is presented as MMMM but it reads more like a bdsm harem. The phantom is the master and in his torture chamber of pleasure, he has taught Christophe to become an even better singer than before, landing them the lead roles even if they would normally go to women. Then we have Raoul and Matthieu, both friends of and in love with Christophe, who agree to be with the phantom to please them. There are some scenes of each man alone with the phantom succumbing to his desires along with scenes of all of together but not how I hoped. In the scenes they are all together, Christophe and The Phantom are a pair and Raoul and Matthieu are another pair. Each man is wrapped up in bondage and positioned together the way the phantom wants. It all felt very mechanical and I would have loved a scene of them altogether with feelings involved because everything just felt wooden. Raoul and Matthieu were just acquaintances when this book started and I never felt a connection between them. I didn’t feel a connection between any of them except for The Phantom and Christophe and even then it was more of an obsession than a romance. I do like an obsessive hero but not the way this was done.

So, I’m now 85% in and at this point I should feel something, anything, for one of these 4 people but besides enjoying the actual storyline because it lines up with the original, I am just not feeling these guys at all. For MMM+ books to work for me, I have to see the love between all of them and unfortunately in this one, I don’t. If something was to happen to Christophe, none of these people would stay together and that is just not the kind of romance I like. I have completely checked out reading this because I’m in the middle of a really dramatic scene and I just cannot find it in me to want to keep going. I’m 85% into a 190 page book and I’m just not interested to find out how these 4 are going to make this work so I’m going to DNF it.

Oh & there are a lot of editing mistakes in this. Wrong names used or just spelled differently like Eric and Erik in the same paragraph.

[Leo]

3.5 stars.
This felt like a more erotic kind of retelling as it was a lot of sex, lust an not that much else. But I'm used by the books feeling like they are vastly different genres and it was entertaining. Altough probably not the most memorable.
Collecting this series is weird as it's very hit and miss but I'm still eager to read the next one. Think it's because each book is by different authors such as horror reteling

[patrícia]

I received and ARC from the author and this is honest opinion.

3.5 ⭐️

I liked the retelling story, and the approach to the original, but the sex scenes were just weird and mechanical… I hoped for “ oh my god there are 4 of us and are all so hot and want to devour each other 24/7 at the same time” kind of sex, but we got insta lust, insta love in your face and in this case it didn’t worked.

Loved the gender identity discovery 💜 it worked perfectly to the character. And also loved the outfits descriptions and the masquerade, sounded very beautiful and magical!

I liked the ending and the balance that they encounter together, along with that playroom, this ending sounded more real.

I wanted and needed this to be better… I expected more horror, tension and a bit of gore may I say…

[Chase Coe]

Like… idk.

This wasn’t bad, necessarily, but it also wasn’t good? It was pretty short and by the end, I truly didn’t care what happened. Essentially, the Phantom was a v insecure Dom who needed his pets’ absolute devotion, which really just cracked me up.

Pretty disappointed with this entire series thus far, barring Death’s Bloom & Beautiful Adam.

[ML]

HOT

This was a seriously hot retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. The 4 people in this story had such great chemistry.

I loved how the story unfolded and was super nervous there wouldn’t be an HEA. Thankfully, there was. It was a super hot one. Super sexy. I might reread that epilogue in the future. 😍😆

[Mandy]

First things first: points off for grammatical and spelling errors. These are a frustration for me so I do tend to keep it in mind when rating.

Now, for the story. I really keep wanting to love the stories in this series. I love horror, I love m/m romance but....some of these, I'm only getting the romance, but not really much horror. For this one, I felt there was little horror and little romance. I was trying not to put spoilers, but, this one is just so...ugh! So, here it is: this does not read to me as a m/m/m/m love story. I see Eric obsessing over Christophe, tolerating Matthieu, and delighting in dominating a dominant man like Raoul.

Honestly, Matthieu felt....extra. At first, I thought he'd be the main character, thought he'd be the one this story centered around, but, the more I read, the more it just felt like he was thrown in there to add a fourth. And while I applaud the use of bondage, most of the sex scenes just fell flat because there was very little emotion to them. Okay, so Christophe seemed to adore Eric and was happy the others were there adoring him, but...little was explored of Matthieu and....well, any of the other characters. Ditto for Raoul. The "relationship" between them, the decision for them to become a quartet, it just felt very rushed and didn't work for me.

[Queen I of Book Wh😒re]

5 seconds after reading this book,i forgot about it that's how banal i found it including the grammar and spelling mistakes.

[Azathoth]

Unable to get over the crazy amount of “Pup” and “Kitten” spoken during sex scenes. There’s a lot of sex scenes. Also the whole plan was to fuck the murder out of the murderer and he still ended up killing someone else.

[Maxie Froelicher]

Love Never Dies walked so Night’s Melody could run 🙏

[Amy]

I should have loved this, but I wasn’t connecting to any of the characters. I would have loved it otherwise.

[Christopher Shelton]

This was a surprising charming story, despite the monster theme of the series. And while I wouldn’t consider the Phantom warm and fuzzy in the slightest, the book didn’t get overly dark in dealing with a creative, brilliant, yet physically and emotionally scarred murderer. There’s definitely some death in the book, but it’s not heavy – it just happens and the story continues.

Even though the story is set in the 1800s, the characters are remarkably progressive in their thinking and are quite kinky, either by choice or simply by entanglement with the Phantom. Everything is consensual, but some of their desires were not present before the Phantom introduced them.

I was surprised a bit by the progression of the story – definitely suspend reality a bit when reading how things move along. Regardless, it’s a good story, and has an interesting HEA.

[bopityboo]

The premise itself is good —and the book might have been good if not for the rest. The characters seem stuck in their ways and the story almost happens around them, without touching them ; they do not evolve or change in any meaningful way (until maybe the very end and even then it's very dull because it's so predictable).

A lot of typos, grammatical errors or misused words and the writing itself is quite awkward. One example of many: "My dream has always been that I want to be a star" → "My dream has always been to be a star" would have been way simpler and better. Lots of similar unnecessarily convoluted sentences. Some parts are worded in a very modern way, some in a more ancient style —or what we would now think of as older— as if the author couldn't settle on a writing style or kept forgetting. Maybe didn't even realise they were doing so.

The same is true with the story itself, some anachronistic elements pop up here and there and act as little jump scares, breaking the illusion and taking me out of the book.

There's a mix of trying to lob some french into it and then forgetting altogether: lots of "monsieur", "mon dieu" and a failed attempt at French culture (the morning breakfast of a very minor background character is eating an almond croissant, which I very much doubt is 19th century accurate and is definitely not 21th century accurate either for french people —we usually eat plain butter croissants and pain au chocolat) but on the other hand important details are ignored (why would the phantom sign "O.G" for "opera ghost" and not "F.O" for "le fantôme de l'opéra" ?) or straight up wrong (the opera house should be named *le* Rêve, not *la* Rêve, the nicknames version of the characters' French names are distinctly English, not French, accents missings or randomly added to words where they do not belong).
Lots of (historical and contemporary) details about France and French would have been corrected with a quick online search or asking a french person.

Some of the things that bugged me:
- At the beginning we learned that Christophe had a few encounters with Eric in his room and they had to be careful not to get caught, but a bit later we learn he actually shares his room with Matthieu: the way it's written at first one just assumes it's his room alone and the danger lies in the fact that it's a shared living space with a series of bedroom and so people come and go in the corridor and might go in their friends' or colleagues' rooms… but then when we learn it's a shared room there's no indication on how they managed to do it and not get caught
- Christophe comes out as non-binary/genderfluid to another character, saying that on this day he (the pronoun used for him up to that point) feels more like a woman, with the other character calling him a girl, and the author switches his pronoun to "them" and not "her" ?
- It wouldn't be the gendarmerie responding to a crime but the police: the gendarmerie is part of the military and is active in the countryside and less densely populated areas, the police is in the big cities (this is the case right now and from a quick look at Wikipedia historically as well)
- Eric gives Matthieu a locked golden cuff, which you would think would be noticed by other people very quickly, at least when he's in rehearsals or when he has to dress a certain way for a performance and a golden cuff is clearly not part of his costume
- The first time Christophe goes below the opera, they walk all the way. Then when they go back through the same passage and to the same place with Matthieu and Raoul in tow, they have to take a boat?
- At the end when Christophe plays the main role in the opera, he's nervous on opening night because "he's never played the main role before", which is very much not the case: at the beginning when the main singer is injured and then died, he takes her place for the performance.
- During the Carmen performance, it's first written than Eric takes José's role, then next chapter it's told he'd taken Piagi's. There are other similar typos in the book, which are very distracting because they forces me to go back and check I remembered correctly and was not myself mistaken
- At the end "the mob" (of angry spectators) floods the theater and finds a way underground, to Eric's home, despite many many many people having looked over and over for a secret passage for many years: a simple solution would have been for example for Eric to discard his mask just in front of the passage he takes, or leave it partially open in his haste to leave the theater —as during this scene he's driven by his emotions and it would be perfectly believable he'd make a mistake like this
- In the XIXth century they didn't have suitcases, but used trunks. Similarly, a newspaper has a picture of a performance at the front when exposure time of contemporary cameras wouldn't allow it.
- The Phantom's mask is very confusing: I never quite understood what part of his face it covered, as at different times it seems different part of it are visible even when wearing it. There are also a few times when he's wearing it when he's said to have taken it of earlier and there are no mention of him putting it back on again.

You can feel the author wanting to tell a story but being too scattered to write a solid one.

[Amy Voce]

“𝑯𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏, 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒂 𝒈𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓. 𝑯𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒔, 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆.”

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“𝑺𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝑰 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒂𝒔 𝒊𝒇 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒚 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚”

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“𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖, 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒆?”

“𝑰’𝒎 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝑰 𝒂𝒎 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏,”

“𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝑰’𝒎 𝒂 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓. 𝑰’𝒎 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 , 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒏𝒆𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓. 𝑺𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝑰’𝒎 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏, 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒐𝒅𝒂𝒚. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝑰’𝒎 𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒎𝒂𝒏. 𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒕𝒐 𝒆𝒙𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒕 𝒃𝒆𝒚𝒐𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕, 𝑰 𝒔𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒚 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝑰 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍”

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Drake Lamarque, has brought a tantalising and titillating rendition of the classic Phantom Of The Opera. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS! This is such a smart retelling of Gaston Leroux's extravagant Novel. This touched base with gender fluidity and polyamory. I loved all the boisterous characters, especially Christophe. They were so liberated and it was not hard to see why they captured the heart of trustworthy Matthieu, steadfast Raoul and of course the attention of enigmatic opera ghost. Night's Melody is a MMMM romance full with operatic drama that leaked from the fibre of this story and made for an outstanding and more modern rebirth of mysterious Phantom that haunts the opera grounds. The most sizzling book from the Monster & Mayhem Collection thus far, with a montage of submission, dominance & pleasurable pain. There is no place for vanity here! so leave it at the door and step into 1884's The Opera La Rȇve, lose your inhibitions and enjoy the show.

[lemonysnickety]

Character names were frequently mixed up, comma splices everywhere, sentence structure often exasperatingly poor, the plot may have been based on Phantom of the Opera but it somehow managed to make little sense here, the NB character’s revelation had no buildup or emotion or anything behind it (may as well have been a throwaway line, except that the pronouns changed—sort of, author reverted to he/him quite a few times after that, so did author forget or was it an edit added later? tbh felt like a random choice based on that character having been forced to wear a dress early on), and there was a lot of hand waving at “the theatre will reopen in x days” with basically no explanation for how all the stuff was cleaned/rebuilt/financed/etc. none of the characters felt even remotely real or likable.

[Victoria]

Very good

There were a lot of errors and misspellings but over all I really enjoyed the story
I absolutely adore phantom of the opera and this retelling was probably my favorite one.
4 stars simply due to the errors and I don't know that I was a fan of the author's writing style but obviously the latter is a personal opinion.. the story was good and I enjoyed each character having their own distinct personalities for even such a short story.. I find a lot of the time standalones have trouble distinguishing and fleshing out character personalities and traits when there are more than 2 main characters but this one didn't have that issue.. I also love Christophe's identity being so easily accepted and that it was even in the story I have very rarely seen non binary characters introduced especially when they're a leading role... I think this story was well done

[Beth King]

This was a nice little book.

It definitely wasn’t the best thing ever, but it wasn’t hard to get through and it was a decent Phantom of the Opera retelling.

The spice level was ok. I think it was definitely less than what you would expect in a why-choose.

I don’t have any strong feelings either way about most of the characters or the plot.

Eric was definitely my favorite part. He was a possessive little murder baby who just needed ANYONE to show him a little humanity and love.

It enjoyed the read. I got through it good, but it definitely isn’t something I would revisit.

Happy reading.

[Ida Umphers]

Any Phantom reimagining, succeeds or fails with its Phantom. The character must be mysterious, dangerous, frightening and seductive all at the same time and all in with each of these descriptions, not just a vaguely threatening presence. This Phantom meets these criteria in spades and I was hooked immediately by the history, the atmosphere and the characters here. It definitely isn't your Phantom and Christine story, lol. It's got steam galore and the perfect HEA for Eric, Raoul, Christophe and Matthieu.

[Juniper]

Ultimately, I liked the way this book pulls from its original inspiration to create this story: you can see the lineage but this is also very much on its own path, and that path is one of strong, fast moving emotions, interesting connections, and vibes and atmosphere for days. The intensity and speed of both love and lust fit, I think, the story and the characters, and it’s an easy narrative to get caught up in once it’s started.

*I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.

[K-Me]

Wow! This was a quite steamy and sensual take on the phantom of the opera! I loved how it forged its own unique take on the tale. Enjoyed the historical atmosphere and there a few little surprise twists and reveals that I did not see coming. I appreciated that although it was dark and a bit kinky, we still got to know and relate to our men. A pretty quick and sexy Halloween season read!

[RedsBookReads]

Interesting retelling

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book but I was really surprised. I loved Christophe and how open he was and how determined to have all three men in his life. The Phantom was deliciously dark and I loved how he unashamedly dominated all three of the men.

[Josie]

3.5 Stars

I did not anticipate the direction this story would go. I always loved the Phantom on the Opera story and this book gave it an unexpected but entertaining spin. I knew the Phantom would be a kinky dude, but damn! I loved that he got a HEA though, which he was always denied in the original story.

[Shaedlyn]

I didn't know this was missing in my life.

I never knew that what was missing in my life was a 4-way gay polyamorous BDSM retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. Eric, Christophe, Matthieu, and Raoul have pulled me in to their escapades and made my Phantom-geek heart very happy. Fans of all the variations of the Phantom's story should enjoy this Happily Ever After.

[Teena]

The Monster and his Pets

What an excellent retelling of Phantom of the Opera!! All the drama and action had me on the edge of my seat. Finding love an acceptance for whole you truly are. HEA indeed.

[Akame]

Myślę, że tylko mój wrodzony masochizm czytelniczy trzyma mnie przy tej serii. Czworokąt z upiorem z opery w tle. Poziom absurdu, level master. Smutne, że w tej serii nawet dobrzy autorzy potrafią stworzyć takie koszmarki.

[Elyse]

DNF at 50%
I had such a hard time with Christophe, why is everybody obsessed with him?
Raoul and Matthieu were only agreeing to be with the Phantom for him, since it was his idea.
Wasn't a fan of Eric the DOM that want to control everything.
Didn't see any romance here.

[Natalie H]

Feb 2025
Kindle edition

Read for a group challenge week 7. Well, it's another one off the TBR. MMMM but I dunno, something about it felt stunted and I couldn't get into the story. Maybe because I've seen TPOTO and my brain locked in. Had cheating vibes with Cristophe deciding he wanted it all and the others having to jump on board. BDSM and nicknames bunny, kitten and puppy. Had potential. Not for me.

[Belinda Zamora]

Wonderful

This was surprisingly sweet with plenty of kinky heat.
There was really good world building and plenty of danger and suspense that kept me thoroughly engaged.

[Natasha Lynn Harris]

A Dark Kinky Retelling

A great read of darkness, and a lot of kink. The Phantom of the Opera was always a little dark but this just reved up with all the kink.

[Scooby2]

DNF 25% not holding my attention and at this point don't care about any of the 4 MC's

[Dee]

Beautiful

This story of 4 men and their growing love, the BDSM aspects, everything. This story is amazing. A wonderful reimagining!