Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - I Married a Beast

Spicy scale: 4.5/5

This was a fine addition to the "'Prime Mating Agency" series. Everything you love about the other books, you get here in spades. A low angst romance with a couple who is absolutely smitten with each other from the beginning. The human female MC that delves into another culture and adapts, offends some people but in the end everybody is very well-meaning. Said human also challenges said culture, for the better. At the end of the book our couple is happily married with kids.

I'm glad the author changed it up and gave us a heroine that is looking forward to marrying a "monstrous" alien. Up until now, pairings were driven by other factors and the alien's physical parts was something our humans had to overcome before appreciating them in all their glory. Not this time! Belle wants a monster for a husband, and goes to our favourite matchmaker to make this happen.

It's also nice to revisit the events of other books. Bayron was a character in "I Married a Naga" (my favourite of the series), and it was interesting to see the version of the events from his point of view. Since he's an antagonist in that book, I wasn't thrilled about him being our MC at first, and I couldn't reconcile the Bayron we got here and the Bayron from book 2. But the author did a great job giving context and adding nuance, and by the end of the book I was really happy about having him as our protagonist. I loved learning about him and will probably soon read book 2 again.

Also, he's the best beefy grumpy possessive cinnamon roll I've seen in a while. I loved reading chapters from his POV.

The plot happening on Trangor was great. Again, it changed a bit from previous books. The Zamorians aren't facing a big threat our female protagonist ends up solving (like in many books). We do spend some time with Bayron's people, but a good third and the main plot of the book happens off-world (in Trangor) and is more personal. It's about Bayron, his reputation, whether or not he deserves it and if he's willing to change his actions now that he knows why people are not appreciating his tactics. I like that the main conflict was at its core a more personal one (even if intergalactic issues end up being tangled in all of this a little bit).

So why only 3 stars? There's so much to love here!

It's a series of smaller issues, but those add up, and I ended up not liking the book as much as others in the series, despite loving the above elements.

I have some issues with Belle. I liked her for the most part, but there were moment where I just didn't get her. I couldn't really grasp her character and what made her tick. I think the author tried to do too much with her, and she kinda lost me. Some scenes just didn't make sense to me and I feel like Belle acted or said some things because the plot demanded it, not because it fits with her character.
I also low key hated the repeated references to Beauty and the Beast. It's a small thing that probably doesn't bother anybody else, but this isn't a Beauty and the Beast retelling! So I didn't understand why this reference was brought up multiple times in the book. It felt forced and unnecessary.
There are several moments in the book where the author puts groups of people down as a way to make her main characters look better, and I hate that. That was often done by Bayron to praise Belle.
Everything is too perfect. It's a low angst, happy ending, kinda series, so it's not unexpected, but it felt a bit ridiculous how Everything falls perfectly into place for everybody. Especially the last few chapters, it's just an exposition on how awesome our main characters are, how they deserve the best and get it, and more, and they go on to live their perfect lives, that everybody envies and wants to copy. It's a lot.
To probably everyone's surprise, I didn't like the stone wolf puppy plot... I know, I know! He's very cute and all, I have nothing against him, I really liked him, but his storyline was useless. The whole plot around him didn't really matter, and there were enough things going on (more interesting and relevant things), and I'd rather have focused on that. He only serves to show how awesome Belle is, and we already have multiple ways that does the same thing (again, that was the kind of thing that made things seem too perfect and over the top).
Also, babies. Because we can't have a happy ending without there being babies. The promise of them isn't enough, they have to be there.

All in all, I liked the book a lot, there's many elements that I really enjoyed. But there were some things that were just not for me, so that's why this is *only* a 3.5 stars rating, but I totally understand how this can be a 4+ stars book for others.

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