Rating:4.5🌈

Cheap Heat continues Lily Mayne’s unique paranormal romance series set in an otherworldly underground wrestling world, Goliaths of Wrestling. 

It’s a real departure from the author’s other dark fiction. Those still has a romantic theme, but are often raw, futuristic, and dystopian.  Here, we get a bit of paranormal romcom, wild otherworldly sexual imagery and practices (especially in this case), and a company of found family wrestlers that’s evolving alongside each other’s romantic journeys. 

Cheap Heat is notable in that’s its couple is markedly different from the other two relationships Mayne has created for this series.  In the previous books, the types of beings involved with each other were, probably, recognizable to the reader.  Human, werewolf, Fae, and a type of paranormal, a Empyn, that reads as a  type of succubus, even as each had a great, layered personality and background.  That vague sense of connection extends to most (although not all) the rest of the Goliaths.  Some truly bizarre and unique beings are part of this wrestling world. 

Rafe Hare, a ghoul, is the new IT guy hired to bring the company and the Goliaths online and streaming worldwide.  He’s a prickly, socially awkward introvert, who has no idea of the world he’s about to enter. 

Dan Ewen is one of the most popular of the wrestlers at the Goliaths of Wrestling.  What specifically makes Dan so popular also makes him unique.  He’s a dullahan.  His head comes off, and his body operates separately from his head. A wildly different situation no matter how you slice it. Or view it.

These two are “opposite attracts” in every sense. And while the other books were downright giggle fests as well as wonderful love stories, this has a different, albeit well written, feel to it.  The characters have been through some very different obstacles, including their own struggles towards understanding each other , and their reliance on their assumptions about each other has to be addressed as well.  

All of which is done while some pretty imaginative sex is occurring, alone and together. And with a pumpkin. Ok, that last is snort funny. 

 I absolutely enjoyed Cheap Heat, loved the journey Rafe and Dan had to take to arrive at their own HEA.  Rafe’s friends are amazing and I hope they figure into future books.  

What a fantastic series and story. The author has such an incredible voice and imagination that I never know what will happen or which way a narrative will go.

Read the warnings. Sexy, kinky, otherworldly, hilariously spew worthy, and a definite recommendation.

Cover illustration: Vic Gray/Bloodwrit

Goliaths of Wrestling: 

🔷Impromptu Match #1

🔷Clean Finish #2

🔷Cheap Heat #3

🔷False Comeback #4-tbd

Buy link

        Cheap Heat (Goliaths of Wrestling Book 3)

    

Blurb

Rafe

I really, really don’t like my neighbour.

We’ve lived next door to each other for three years, and we couldn’t be more opposite. I’m a quiet, introverted ghoul with a small friend group and a love of true crime podcasts and tabletop role-playing games. Dan Ewen a party boy with an endless string of ‘guests’ who likes to blare country music all night. He’s loud, inconsiderate, messy, loud, a total dudebro… did I mention loud?

And when I start my new job as IT manager at Goliaths of Wrestling, an underground supernatural wrestling organisation, I quickly discover that my terrible dullahan neighbour is now my new colleague. Great.

I still don’t like him. It doesn’t change anything. I can avoid him at work. But when I spot him one night through his living room window doing something that is utterly shocking, obscene, really weird… I find myself thinking about my annoying neighbour. A lot.

All the time, actually.

Oh no.

Dan

That neighbour of mine is a cute, surly ghoul whose pretty green eyes and angry scowl just make me want to rile him up even more.

We’ve never really been buddies, despite living side by side for three years. But when he starts working at Goliaths as our IT manager, helping to bring us into a new digital age, our lives begin to become a bit more entangled.

Mainly because he starts watching me each night while I… relax. So I make sure to give him a good show through my living room window.

I’ve always assumed Rafe Hare is straight, but it quickly becomes clear that I might be wrong. And when I propose a fantastic new way for us to get… ahem… friendlier, he’s as all-in as I am.

Which means I get to show him just how weird it can get with a dullahan. And I can’t wait.

• Publication date: September 27, 2024
• Language: English
• Print length: 505 pages