Review: Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn

Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend
Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend by Alan Cumyn

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF’ed at 14%

First, I’d like to thank Maximum Pop Books for the copy of this book – if only I’d enjoyed it a little more!

I don’t DNF easily – I have loads of books I’ve read a little of and left (sometimes for years), but know I will come back to eventually. This isn’t one of these books.

Initially, I was quite excited for this book – a parody of the supernatural romance genre which I think most of us enjoy/ed but have problems with (controlling behaviour, toxic relationships, jumping straight into marriage at 18, etc.). I thought that maybe, if written well, a parody of these books, highlighting their issues and how unrealistic they can be, could be good. But there’s one problem – a parody of those books tends to be insulting to those readers who devoured them.

Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend takes the vampire/werewolf/zombie trend and throws in a pterodactyl. There’s a problem with that – supernatural love interests tend to be human-like, with perhaps the addition of a few cool powers. Pyke, the pterodactyl, isn’t human-like at all – he acts much more like a dog. Those books where the young innocent girl slowly falls for the dark mysterious vampire are relatable, whereas here, Sheils has very sexual thoughts towards a character who acts quite a lot like a dog.

I put this book down at 14% because I was very uncomfortable – this book borders on beastiality, and I’m not ok with that. This is the first book I definitely do not want to pick up again.

This book (subject matter aside) is also way too long, at 400 pages. Cumyn’s writing is alright, but he tends to drift into banal chit-chat and descriptions without furthering the story.

Unfortunately, this one just wasn’t for me, and I would urge you to avoid – life is too short for bad books.

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Have you read this book? What did you think? Comment below or tweet me at @annalisebooks!

Annalise x

3 comments

  1. I was put off requesting this because it just sounded too weird. Like something you might come up with if you had serious emotional problems and were really, really drunk. Your review has made me feel like I dodged a bullet!

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  2. Oh. My. God. I had no idea what to think from the title and while it intrigued me, because dinosaurs, I can imagine my thoughts would be much like yours. Thanks for the heads up so I can dodge the bullet! Shame you didn’t enjoy it (now looking at goodreads I can see that you weren’t the only one)
    Enchanted by YA

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