CW: mild gore, kidnapping, women in peril

⭐ Tropes ⭐

- Fated mates
- Marriage of convenience
- Shifter romance

🌈 Representation 🌈
- Bi MMC
- Black heroine and side characters 

🌶️ Spice 🌶️
- 🍑 Play
- Tentacles
- Light bondage

Romances which are deemed to have any comedic element are rarely genuinely laugh out loud funny. This may be an exception. The banter between the MCs was amazing, and even the side characters made me laugh (special shout-out to Alexis the talking sword 🙏)

Here we have a fated mates situation, blurred due to a love potion gone wrong. Are they fated mates, or is it the love potion? Brie and Felix had excellent chemistry, further amplified by the fated mates/love potion situation. It allowed for the reluctance of the heroine to come to terms with her own feelings and become vulnerable and genuinely fond of the hero, causing the conflict of "does he love me or is it the potion", as opposed to the usual miscommunication trope which just seems to be EVERYWHERE at the moment. 

Underneath the romance, we have the fantasy plot playing out, with demons, dragons, kidnapping and magic playing out. We had the suspense of the whole kidnappng storyline playing out and how it progressed without completing overwhelming the romantic development. They ran side by side one another and complimented each other perfectly. 

I'd also like to take a moment to show my appreciation for the genius that is managing to include tentacle smût in a werewolf romance. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it really did 😂 

Literally the only thing I can find fault in was the epilogue. Now, I enjoyed the epilogue in that it has some foreshadowing for the next book in the series, HOWEVER, I like my epilogues to be seeing a little smidge into the future with the couple who the book has been based around. While there was a very brief glimpse of that, I don't really feel like I got enough closure in the HEA. That's just personal preference though.