Fairy Tales From the Underworld Part I: A Bedtime Story (Beauty Meets the Beast) by L.C. Moon – A Dark Romance Review
Not a Bedtime Story
When the request to review a dark romance fairy tale erotica novel came up in our Discord server, I’ll admit I was hesitant. It’s certainly not the type of reading I usually do and I didn’t know how I would review something so out of my wheelhouse.
This was my crucial mistake going into Part I of the Fairy Tales from the Underworld trilogy: A Bedtime Story (Beauty Meets the Beast) by L.C. Moon. I expected a quick smutty read – and what I got instead was an emotionally charged horror story.
I do not know much about the tropes used in erotic fiction but giving it my best go I would classify this novel as dark Mafia / captor/captive. This, of course, means reader discretion must be used going into it. There are graphic depictions of violence and heavy themes of abuse, drug use, human trafficking and trauma throughout. It is intended for an 18+ audience.
The Story
The story starts with Laura Spencer, a 23-year-old woman who mostly keeps to herself, going out to a bar for a rare night of fun. When her friend ditches her, she reluctantly accepts a ride home from an attractive man named Kayne Malkin. You read that wrong. It’s pronounced “cane.”
Unbeknownst to Laura, Kayne has been sent to collect her on behalf of the seedy criminal organization her brother Peter betrayed. She knew her brother was in hiding but she never believed the danger was real. After an intense interrogation, Kayne steps in and takes Laura to his home as assurance until they find her brother.
What follows is not a whirlwind romance where the beauty tames the beast and they live happily ever after. (Although there is a stunning library within Kayne’s palatial home.) Laura and Kayne are both creations of their environments and incredibly traumatized people. Neither knows how to love themselves, let alone each other.
The Line
In case you are concerned, Moon clearly draws a line with rape. It blurs at times as a necessity of the captor/captive trope, but it is repeated throughout that Kayne’s sexual proclivities require the consent of his partners for his enjoyment. Those unfamiliar with BDSM and its practices may find some of the concepts difficult to grasp.
Character Building
As the story unfolds, readers learn more about Laura’s past and how it influences her current life. Peter served as a lifeline to Laura throughout their childhood, and she grapples with the reality of being in danger because of him. As she’s thrust into the criminal underworld, she is revolted by everything she sees – but her survival depends upon her acceptance. Her decision making is baffling and frustrating, which is exactly what you’d expect from someone in her circumstances.
Kayne’s motivations towards Laura shift throughout the novel. He struggles to reconcile the predator/protector role he’s placed himself into with her. While readers may be screaming “You love her, stupid!” Kayne legitimately does not have the emotional intelligence to understand that about himself. These character’s flaws and their current circumstance lead to a toxic horror-show of a dark romance without a happy ending.
What I Liked
Moon’s writing is captivating and emotionally evocative, leading me to finish the novel across two readings. I found myself wrapped up in the believable world she crafted and wanting more of it. I even cried during the portions of Laura’s darkest moments because they felt so real and understandable.
Moon also displays a thorough understanding of BDSM dynamics and does her best to help her audience (through Laura) also gain some of that knowledge. The sex scenes themselves are well written and do not overpower the overall story.
While Moon utilizes tropes throughout, as to be expected, she does not seem to rely upon them. The dark romance feels real and organic, largely due to her not shying away from truths of the genre. Instead of allowing Laura to roll over and take it, there is a genuine examination of her psyche and the damage the experience is causing.
What I Didn’t Like
At times the formatting of the story feels slightly clunky. There are multiple perspective changes throughout the book. Normally this is fine by me, but in this instance there are characters whose perspective is only explored once or twice purely for narrative purposes. This led to some confusion on my end as I was never quite sure if a character was important to the plot or simply important to moving the plot.
My Rating
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of dark romance / Mafia / captor/captive erotica. For those unfamiliar with the genre – it is more difficult for me to say if you will like it. I do not consider myself a fan of the genre, but still found myself deeply enjoying this book. As soon as I finished, I immediately sent a plea out for an ARC of the sequel.
My rating:
(4.2 / 5)
Fairy Tales From the Underworld Part I: A Bedtime Story (Beauty Meets the Beast) By L.C. Moon was originally released in 2014. A new version will be available in late September on all formats. It features an original soundtrack composed by Lana Chacra which can be streamed on YouTube, Spotify, and purchased on iTunes. More information about the author, the novel, and future releases can be found on the trilogy’s website.
Published in January 2025, Virginia Feito’s second book, Victorian Psycho, is… hard to categorize. Much like Feito’s first book, Mrs March (which I also highly recommend), Feito has created a main character that is paranoid, violent and utterly charming. Victorian Psycho might be any classic Victorian novel about a governess. Miss Notty, entering her new place of employment and getting to know the Pound family and their two children, Andrew and Drusilla. That is if you ignore the psychopathic thoughts that keep entering Miss Notty’s head.
- SOON TO BE A FEATURE FILM FROM A24 STARRING MARGARET QUALLEY AND THOMASIN MCKENZIE”This book will be the bloody belle of the 2025 literary ball
- ” (Oprah Daily)Most Anticipated Books of 2025: Vulture, Oprah Daily, Polygon, Reader’s Digest, Lit Hub, CrimeReads, The Stacks, LibraryReads, PasteBest Books of the Month: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Goodreads, Gizmodo, Book Riot, The A
- V
Last update on 2025-03-03 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The Plot.
When we begin Victorian Psycho, we meet Winifred Knotty, a young woman travelling to Ensor House through the English Grim Wolds in what feels like the Victorian era (the year is never actually pinpointed.) The reader is provided with a countdown of ‘three months till Christmas’ and simply told that “in three months everyone in this house will be dead.”
Miss Notty is to be the new Governess to the two Pound children. As she settles into her new position, she appears to be good at her job. She ensures that the children are fed, tucks them in at night, tells bedtime stories and provides them with intellectual conversation. She only jokes about eating children and really has no idea where that missing maid has disappeared to.
Highlights.
Victorian Psycho is written as a chaotic interior monologue, punctuated with intermittent dialogue as Miss Notty interacts with other characters, or eavesdrops on them from the hallway. The reader is completely immersed in this confused, violent mind, despite this, it is impossible not to like Miss Notty. I think it might be due to her witty intelligence and her keen ability to dismantle the other character’s social pretenses. Whatever it is, Feito has done a marvelous job of characterization on Miss Notty.
As an extra highlight I need to mention the way Feito has named her characters using a very Dickensian method of using words that describe their personalities. To name a few; Miss Notty, whose mind seems to be in knots, Mr. And Mrs. Fancy, who are very posh and the name that took the cake for me was the baby, called William Ebenezer Poncy Fancey, but don’t worry, you won’t have to read that name too often as he does not last long in Miss. Notty’s care.
Drawbacks.
There is a lot of confusion in Victorian Psycho, which is in keeping with our point of view main character. However, at some points in the story the confusion was so thick that I had to stop reading and try to untangle the events I had just read. If you are a reader who enjoys a clear and concise plot and action, this one is probably not for you. While you are in Notty’s head suffice it to say you have to roll with the unconnected tangents and strange metaphors, if you’re not willing to do this it would be best to jump ship.
The Final Take.
This is a perfectly perverse take on a Victorian gothic. Full to the brim with brutal horror and visceral imagery, balanced out with tongue in cheek sarcasm. Victorian Psycho flips the script on the traditional ‘women running away from houses’ theme of the gothic. Instead, we have a woman coming in and, well… you’ll have to read the book to see.
(5 / 5)
As a disclaimer, this is a review of The House of My Mother from a critical perspective. I will not be discussing my opinions of the legal case against Ruby Franke and Jody Hildebrandt. I will be discussing the merits of the book as a work of true crime alone.
In 2015, Ruby Franke started a YouTube channel called 8 Passengers. In August of 2023, Franke and her business associate Jodi Hildebrandt were arrested for, and later plead guilty to, charges of aggravated child abuse. And in January of this year, Shari Franke told her story in The House of My Mother.
The story
The House of My Mother is the true story of Shari Franke, the oldest child of one of the most famous family vlogger families.
As a child, Shari came to the conclusion that her mother didn’t like her. Soon, she began to fear her mother’s anger.
Things got significantly worse when Ruby started their family vlog. All of the families most intimate moments were splashed across the internet for anyone to watch. This became a living nightmare for Shari.
Of course, that was only the start of the family nightmare. Because Ruby was about to meet someone who would reinforce all of the darkest parts of herself.
Eventually Shari manages to escape her home. But her younger siblings were still in her mother’s clutches. She had to save them, and her father, from the monster her mother had become.
What worked
Through the book, Shari only ever mentions the name of one of her siblings, Chad. This is because Chad is the only of her siblings that is an adult at the time of the publication.
There are children involved in this story. Children who’s lives and privacy have already been damaged. Shari didn’t want to do that to them again, and neither do I.
It probably won’t surprise you that this book is full of upsetting details. But not in the way you might imagine.
Nowhere in this book will you find gory details about the abuse the Franke kids suffered. And I consider that a good thing. Those sort of details are all fun and games when we’re talking fiction. When it’s real kids who are really living with the damage, it’s not a good time.
What you’ll find instead is a slew of more emotionally devastating moments. One that stuck with me is when Ruby’s mother gives her a pair of silk pajamas as a gift after Ruby gave birth to one of her babies. Shari asks Ruby if she’d bring her silk pajamas when she had a baby. Ruby responds that yes, when Shari becomes a mother they can be friends.
What a lovely way to make a little girl feel like she’s not worth anything unless she reproduces. And, if she does decide to have children, who is going to bring her silk pajamas?
- From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing
- Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival
- Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2
Last update on 2025-03-02 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
In the end, this isn’t a story about ghosts or demons. It’s not about a serial killer waiting on a playground or in the attic of an unsuspecting family. Instead, this is a story about things that really keep us up at night. It’s the story of a woman so obsessed with perfection that she drove away her eldest daughter. The story of a young woman who’s forced to watch from afar as her beloved brothers and sisters are terrorized and abandoned. These are the sorts of things that really keep us up at night. These are the real nightmares.
More than that, though, The House of My Mother is a story of survival. It’s about a family that was ripped apart and somehow managed to stitch itself back together again. It’s about a brave young woman who managed to keep herself safe and sane in the face of a nightmare. If you haven’t read it yet, I can’t recommend it enough.
For more like this, check out my review of Shiny Happy People.
(5 / 5)
Boreal: an Anthology of Taiga Horror is a collection of twenty-two haunting tales that dwell in the deepest darkest woods and frozen wastelands, edited by Katherine Silva and including Haunted MTL’s very own Daphne Fauber. Each story has even been gifted with its very own poster, hinting at the horrors to be found within it, bestowing a beautiful visual collection as well.
The tales are varied and touch upon the environment in new and different ways, each hearkening to a sort of epiphany or raised awareness. These stories exude both dread and wonder at the smallness of our human existence in contrast to the sacred world we have isolated from, sheltering ourselves in our comfortable houses with centralized heat and everything we could possibly need or want at the ready. The taiga becomes a sanctuary outside of our own dulled awarenesses. It is a holy place imbued with powers beyond mortal human reach, a wilderness that threatens to swallow us – both whole and bit by bit, simultaneously.
The protagonists enter into this realm through ritual, superstition, longing, stubbornness, and their own hubris – yearning to survive its dangers, and to make their own marks upon it. The starkness of their surroundings harbors delicate moments that would be all too easily missed if not deliberately sought or pointed out. The softness of fur, the dappled sunlight shining through trees, the hazy clouds of breath forming in crisp air, the brittleness of bleached bone… those quiet experiences that beg to be forgotten, to lay safely sleeping just below the frozen surface, awaiting spring.
There are those who followed in the footsteps of their predecessors, seeking to escape the constraints of their parent’s and elders’ indoctrination, traditions, madness, and abuse, yearning to find their own way despite also being inextricably bound to their own pasts. There are those who just wanted to go for a walk in the woods, and remained forever changed by what they experienced. There are those who wished to impose their will upon the wilderness, their order falling to disarray, unable to make lasting impact. There are those who sought to leave behind the world of mankind, looking for oneness in the natural order of things through isolation, leaving a bit of themselves behind after being consumed by the terrors they encountered. There are those who truly found communion with the woods, became one with its wildness, and invited its spirit into their hearts to find peace, even at cost of their own lives. And then, there are the spirits themselves…
(3 / 5)
All in all, I give Boreal: an Anthology of Taiga Horror 3.0 Cthulhus. I love existential angst so I found it to be an enjoyable read, and I appreciated the myriad manners in which the biome was explored. But there were points in which I found myself struggling to follow along, as if the words were swept up into their own wilds in ways that alienated myself as reader, as if my mere voyeurism into this otherworldly place was not enough to comprehend the subtle deviations in storytelling mannerisms fully. I suppose in some sense this seems appropriate, but at the same time, it left me feeling a bit unfulfilled, as if I had missed a spiritual connection that should have resonated more deeply.
- English (Publication Language)
- 248 Pages – 02/25/2025 (Publication Date) – Strange Wilds Press (Publisher)
Last update on 2025-01-23 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
