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A review by dinipandareads
Muscles & Monsters by Ashley Bennett
3.0
This is one of those mindless good-time smutty reads that serve as a good palate cleanser between books or if you want something lighthearted and entirely about, well, the smut. This is heavy on instalust turned instalove overnight and while that's not usually my thing, I knew what I was getting into so I didn't mind. I still can't help wishing that we got some scenes that made their connection more believable, especially before big life-changing declarations.
Tegan and Atlas were cute though—she's a passionate, fiery cake maker and he's the owner of the monster-run gym in town. I loved her confidence and seeing body image issues presented from a different perspective was refreshing. In most books, it's always the woman who's self-conscious, who has an unhealthy relationship with her body, and who gets fat-shamed for her body. Atlas, despite being the owner of a gym and working out almost religiously, has a fairly unhealthy relationship with his body. It was sweet how Teg boosted his confidence, stood up for him, and showed him how he's loveable as he is, but I wish we saw more of it.
For being less than 200 pages, I know I can't expect too much but I still wish that the character and relationship arcs had more depth! It would've made this a much more interesting story. Still, I enjoyed the author's writing and will be continuing the series (at least to the next book for now) because this was a good-time read!
Tegan and Atlas were cute though—she's a passionate, fiery cake maker and he's the owner of the monster-run gym in town. I loved her confidence and seeing body image issues presented from a different perspective was refreshing. In most books, it's always the woman who's self-conscious, who has an unhealthy relationship with her body, and who gets fat-shamed for her body. Atlas, despite being the owner of a gym and working out almost religiously, has a fairly unhealthy relationship with his body. It was sweet how Teg boosted his confidence, stood up for him, and showed him how he's loveable as he is, but I wish we saw more of it.
For being less than 200 pages, I know I can't expect too much but I still wish that the character and relationship arcs had more depth! It would've made this a much more interesting story. Still, I enjoyed the author's writing and will be continuing the series (at least to the next book for now) because this was a good-time read!