Review: A Merry Christmas for Art... and His Tentacles by Amy Bellows 4 of 5 stars

A Merry Christmas for Art... and His Tentacles by Amy Bellows
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When cryptids came out as living among us, there was a settling in period, but now having a loch ness monster as your neighbour and a bigfoot as your security guard at work is just par for the course. Luckily for me, Dean happens to work with the sweetest, sexiest cephalopod in the entire building. Unfortunately for him, his people skills aren’t the greatest. When their harpy boss demands that Dean teach him how to interact with people. Teaching him all about the human holiday of Christmas while giving him important people skills, their lessons happen to look like dates. It’s embarrassing that Art's boss assigned someone to teach him people skills. It’s also hopeless. If learning how to interact with human beings was something anyone could learn in a class, he would have done so by now. But hanging out with Dean Miller isn’t so bad, even if Art's tentacles have a mind of their own and won’t stop touching him. He doesn’t mind his awkwardness the way other people do, and he doesn’t mind his tentacles either. His easy acceptance makes Art want things that he's not used to wanting - wonder what he would do if he asked for more than people lessons?

This was a sweet story as Dean tried to teach shy Art how to interact with people and how their dates started to mean much more. I enjoyed the Christmas theme of the story and how their affection for each other developed. The cultural differences were quite funny sometimes. Easy to read, feel and understand. This was an MM story with mature content.

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Review: Wild Match by Amy Bellows 3 of 5 stars

Wild Match by Amy Bellows
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Actor Leo is constantly getting photographed doing things he shouldn’t. Like multiple alphas at the same time, for instance. In a room full of other people. The scandals are adding up, and his agent isn’t happy. When he almost loses the lead role in a high-budget film because of his wild behaviour, he’s given an ultimatum: settle down with a boring alpha to clean up his image, or his agent won’t represent him anymore. The problem is finding a respectable alpha who will have him. That’s where the Perfect Match Agency comes in. They promise to match him with an upstanding member of society in exchange for a little publicity.

I liked alpha Steve and his parents were fun but Leo was a little harder to like and Steve's friends (and there was a lot about them) were all mad and deserved a set of books of their own. I do like the concept of the Perfect Match agency but this felt like a bit too much about some of the players and not enough about Steve and Leo and what they did next (especially as the epilogue was years later and yet they hadn't moved forward much. I also feel like the mention of Leo's parents in the epilogue was a loose end that could have been explored more. Easy to read. This was an MM story with mature content set in the omegaverse with mention of mpreg.

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