I read The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw and Dating and Dismemberment by A. L. Brody back to back and gave myself tonal whiplash, so let's compare these two books, shall we!
The Salt Grows Heavy and Dating and Dismemberment are both short, unusual novels in which two monstrous creatures meet up at a scene of destruction and come to understand one another after a disagreement about how to save some youths and a horrible fire. While both are love stories featuring monsters, neither could be properly marketed as a "monster romance."1
The Salt Grows Heavy (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) features:
- the mermaid (name unpronounceable by human tongue) and the plague doctor (nameless by choice)
- the three surgeons from the eponymous Grimm tale, who believe themselves masters of life itself
- lush, gripping prose, so lyrical it feels halfway to poetry, with beautiful layers of description detailing grotesque rituals, desolate landscapes, and nuanced flavors of despair
- monsters who consume their captors, monsters who consume anything in their path, monsters who consume the weak, monsters who consume each other
- forced autosarcophagy, conscious vivisection, self enucleation, and meals made of other excisions and resections
- a touching love story about recovering from abuse, reclaiming your body, and finding a way to live with the violence of your past
Dating and Dismemberment (⭐⭐⭐⭐) features:
- Darla Drake, Duchess of Death, Creature of Clear Creek, and Jarko Murkvale, nobody of anywhere in particular.
- Gretl the Gullet Gobbler, whose tongue is shaped like a small human child and has its own opinions on occasion
- snappy, dialog-forward prose, with metatextual in-jokes poking good natured fun at both rom-coms and b-grade monster movies
- monsters who have a strict code and only dismember "bad guys," according to their particular definitions
- a home-cooked soup, swamp water in red plastic cups, and stale poptarts
- a touching love story about recovering from burnout, reclaiming your passion, and finding a place that makes you happy
But other than that, they're basically the same book!
(Thanks so much to Jason Pinter and Sageline Books for the eARC of Dating and Dismemberment, which I also reviewed on Goodreads)
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okay so Jarko is a 6'5" leather-wearing loner with a tragic backstory and tentacles for appendages, but the monster romance reader will be disappointed by the total lack of on-page sex, let alone dicks with party tricks
