Remember Monsters

About This Audiobook

*Remember Monsters* isn’t just another queer romance—it’s a razor-sharp character study wrapped in a paranormal love story that refuses to soften its edges. Marine St. Jean writes Pat, the gruff, foul-mouthed butch protagonist, with such unflinching authenticity that you’ll cringe at her cruelty one moment and ache for her vulnerability the next. This isn’t a tale of easy redemption or saccharine confessions; it’s a raw, often brutal exploration of longing, self-loathing, and the monsters we carry (literal and otherwise). The supernatural elements aren’t window dressing—they’re metaphors that bite, forcing Pat and Lisa to confront what they’ve buried.

Ellen Dunbavin’s narration is a masterclass in tonal contrast: her gravelly, no-nonsense delivery for Pat makes every insult land like a gut punch, while her softer, almost hesitant Lisa voice underscores the imbalance between them. The audiobook thrives on this tension—Dunbavin’s pacing mirrors the story’s lurches between black humor and gut-wrenching honesty, and her ability to switch between sarcasm and sincerity in a breath sells the emotional whiplash. What sets this apart from typical paranormal romance? The monsters here aren’t just in the shadows; they’re in the way these women love, or fail to."

"review": "I’ll admit, I side-eyed *Remember Monsters* at first. A butch werewolf with a ‘filthy mouth’ and a pining best friend? It sounded like a familiar trope soup. But within 20 minutes, Ellen Dunbavin’s performance had me hooked—not because the premise was groundbreaking, but because the *execution* was so damn specific. Dunbavin’s Pat isn’t just ‘gruff’; she’s a woman who weaponizes rudeness like armor, and you can *hear* the exhaustion beneath the bravado. When she snarls, ‘I don’t *do* nice,’ it’s not posturing—it’s a confession. The chemistry with Lisa feels painfully lopsided at first, which is the point: St. Jean forces you to sit with the discomfort of unrequited love when one party is too broken to reciprocate.

The paranormal elements are woven in with restraint, avoiding the pitfall of overshadowing the emotional core. (Though I’ll critique one misstep: the werewolf lore gets a tad convoluted in the final act, requiring a pause to untangle the rules.) What works best is how the supernatural mirrors the characters’ trauma—Pat’s transformations aren’t just physical; they’re a release for rage she can’t express as a human. The production is clean, with no distracting edits, though I wished for more atmospheric sound design during the shift scenes to heighten the visceral impact. Still, Dunbavin’s voice alone carries the weight, especially in the quieter moments, like when Lisa’s hope cracks into despair. This isn’t a feel-good listen, but it’s an *honest* one—and in a genre often dripping with idealism, that’s refreshing as hell."

"tags": [
"butch-femme dynamics