Before I begin, I want to state that my review is not a personal attack against the author. We all start somewhere, and I want to be a voice of encouragement to other writers while still being brutally honest.
I’m in Love with Mothman is a story about Heather, a young influencer, who meets, mates, and falls in love with Mothman. As an author, Paige Lavoie has done a decent job of creating a world where a young woman and her cryptid lover can work out a romance.
The descriptions of the steamier scenes were well-written without being gratuitous. Romantically, the scenes are good, but there are explanations for things that really do not add to the story. We do not need to know what birth control Heather is on. It takes me out of a scene. Birth control is simply a buzzkill in romance novels.
The characters are one-dimensional and shallow. I found myself wanting to know Heather from a deeper level of understanding. She is an influencer who is fed up with public scrutiny. So? I have a hard time believing that someone established on the streaming circuit since childhood would crumble and run for cover to a cabin in the woods over a minor amount of bad publicity.
I asked myself, “Who are these people?” more than once. Chris, the antagonist, is given a single character trait of “hillbilly” (my interpretation, not the author’s). I would have liked to know more about what happened to him to make him hate Mothman so much. The story alludes, but never tells. And Mothman? I know nothing of the guy except that he has a big…uh…moth-manhood. He also talks like a robot.
Heather is from Florida. At one point, the author mentions Orlando. As someone who spent over half of their life in that location, I was searching for a single description of a place I may have visited in my early years. I found none. Different locations create different people. What was her upbringing like, besides the influencer mother and her own influencing career? Once again, who is Heather? And why do we care?
Pacing is off. Heather moves to the country early, removing potential points of friction that might have made the character more relatable. Mothman is introduced far too early in the story. This strips the reader of a necessary buildup and exciting reveal. As per the title of the book, I knew he was going to make an appearance eventually, but it is so soon that I had no chance to anticipate or desire him. I wanted to spend more time thinking about what that would be like, using my filthy imagination to fill in the blanks for myself. Mothman’s appearance is kind of a dud. I felt cheated, if truth be told.
Editing is poor. There are words that are correctly spelled but misused, which a simple spell checker probably did not notice. This could have been solved with more eyes of the human variety giving it a once-over. There were points that were repeated unnecessarily, as if an edit was completed, but the original content was left behind in slightly different wording. Correcting this could have reduced the length a bit and added polish. It was actually depressing to see an interesting concept get lost in such lackadaisical editing.
Story-wise, there are parts that could have been interspersed but were written linearly. Distributing these scenes throughout the story could have been more impactful for character development and could have created a better flow. The mom, thyroid, and gluten intolerance angle really do not add to the story. Neither does the lesbian couple that seems to have been randomly thrown into the mix for virtue-signaling purposes. It seems like yet another reason for Heather to go off on a tangent about herself again, a trait which makes her more unlikeable as the story progresses.
Overall, I cannot recommend this book as it is. It needs at least three more passes by an editor to be ready for another test reading. 1/5 Stars.
Anita Sikser
