by Thea Guanzon
narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Brittany Pressley
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Tusk Love is a fantasy romance by Thea Guanzon based on an in-universe book in the Critical Role world of Exandria.
This was delightful and I ATE IT UP.
I preordered both the hardcover (from bookshop.org) and the audiobook (from libro.fm) and inhaled the whole thing in practically one sitting on the day it was published. It was very worth it.
I am a fan of Critical Role though, and I absolutely adored all of the references sprinkled throughout. This was such a great collaboration!
The audiobook was so fun to listen to! Teddy Hamilton is one of my favorite low-voices narrators and he did a phenomenal job with Oskar. This is a duet narration, so he read both Oskar’s POV chapters along with any of Oskar’s lines throughout Guinevere’s POV chapters, which were mainly read by Brittany Pressley (who was FANTASTIC with that character’s sunny disposition and overall sheltered nature).
I haven’t read anything from the author before, but friends of mine really enjoyed The Hurricane Wars so I was optimistic going in. Her prose was very fun to read and I think she especially did a great job on the banter and tension between our main characters. I found myself kicking my little feeties at the romance and also the book was really funny (I laughed out loud a lot). The steamy scenes were great, too, with a heavy focus on consent.
If you’ve never watched anything from the folks at CR, I think the book still stands on its own merits as a romantic fantasy novel.
Tropes: grumpy/sunshine, damsel in distress, only one bed/horse, class differences (forbidden romance)
CW: violence, death, parental abandonment, emotional abuse
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