Book Review: The Dragon’s Bride

I’d never (at least that I can remember) read a monster romance before and I figured this time of year is the perfect time to try one. When I first saw the cover to The Dragon’s Bride by Katee Robert a few months ago and thought the cover, although featuring a monster in the form of a dragon man, was reminiscent of old school romance novels (think male models a la Fabio with the flowing hair etc.).

The novel is the first in Katee Robert’s A Deal with a Demon series. Briar Rose is in an incredibly abusive marriage when she is found by a demon who makes deals. He will save her from her marriage (and take care of her husband), but in exchange she will be auctioned off to a monster from a select group. She is not required to do anything with whoever bids on her, but the monster is allowed to try to seduce her. And she must stay with the monster for seven years. During the bidding we meet some of the other monsters and girls and I’m assuming that the next books in the series are about those others.

Anyway, Briar Rose goes with Sol, a dragon. He is hoping that she will warm up to him and eventually want to have children with him because his land is in trouble and half dragon half human babies can help bring magic and power back to his land. It’s a little weird/different that adding human blood to their line will strengthen the magic because you’d think that adding human blood with weaken magic, but that’s not the case here. They do end up forming a genuine relationship and Briar actually feels much safer with Sol than back amongst the humans.

The story was interesting and it is quite spicy, so that’s always a fun read, but I couldn’t get over the fact that he’s a dragon man creature (more dragon than man) so it was hard to take the story seriously. Although, let’s be honest, how seriously can you take a monster romance lol.

I liked it, but didn’t love it. I’d be open to reading more monster romances and will probably read more of this series when they come out, but it’s definitely not my favorite genre/trope!