Claimed by the Cthulhu by Wendi Guff Review

Starting 2025 off strong with a really bonkers monster romance! Claimed By The Cthulhu is an entertaining monster romance where the moments are wild and the appendages…well even wilder. 😏

Check out my previous post 25 in 2025 Reading Challenge TBR

Genres: Monster Romance
Publisher: Self Published
Publication Date: July 31, 2023
Source: Owned / Everand
Format: e-book/audiobook

MONSTER SPEED DATING—sounds fun, right?Except my life as a marine biologist takes a slippery turn when I mistake a cthulhu for an octopus, only to find him seated across from me on date night.
Now, every time I turn around, he’s there.
Watching.
Winking.
Waiting until I succumb to his charm.
But I’m not ready for love. I have my studies, a mission to save the ocean, and a secret darker than the deepest depths of the sea.
Will Chaos claim me as his, or will I run from him like everyone else in my life?

Goodreads Amazon*
*Available on Kindle Unlimited!

“The thing is like a little monster on its own, a tyrant king demanding what it wants—and His Hardness wants Marea.”

I got this one during one of the Stuff Your Kindle days last year and got really excited when Jamsu @ JamsuDreams agreed to buddy read it with me for our monthly buddy reads together, because I’ve been meaning to knock out some of my owned TBR. Grabbed the audio for this to get the full Imax experience (reading along with the audiobook) and away I went! There is A LOT packed into this 297 page book, almost a bit too much like the author had so many great ideas and tried to shove it all into one book.

The prologue–wild and something you can skip entirely as it doesn’t really give anything to the overall story? But I will be adding removable appendages to the list of monster c!ck traits that I find absurdly entertaining and fun to read about. With a latinx FMC and several LGBTQIA+ aspects and characters, this was a fun little vibe. I do have to warn you, the cover is a tad bit misleading–we assume we are getting a cute romp of a monster romance, which we kind of do? But a major portion of this is all the characters dealing with their trauma or talking through their trauma with each other, so please go into this in the right headspace and read the trigger warnings (the book does not come with it, so I’ve written them down here for your convenience)!

Will I read more in this series? Probably not unless I get them in another SYKD deal, but am I mad I spent my evening listening to this while I bathed my dog? Nope, not one bit and we love that for 2025.

My Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️.5
CW/TW: Spousal death (off-page), references to previous child death/miscarriage (unclear), religious trauma, fertility issues