Tentacles & Triathlons

Leviathan Fitness, Book 2

By: Ashley Bennett

Narrated by: Jack Calihan, Liam Price

Leviathan Fitness is the favorite place of monsters, muscles, and a tentacled creature who can seduce even the hardest-to-win-over human.

When parks department supervisor Reece Rollins decides to sign up for a triathlon, there are two things holding him back. One, his fear of monsters. Two, his sub-par swimming skills.

At the urging of his sister's wolven mate, Reece joins Leviathan Fitness to train in the gym's Olympic-size swimming pool. After running into Reece at the pool, Cyrus offers to help Reece get ready to win the race.

New feelings arise from the depths as Reece and Cyrus learn that monsters and humans go together, tentacle in hand. The only question is, can these two hold on to their newfound love despite their differences?

Contains mature themes.

©2022 Ashley Bennett Author (P)2023 Tantor

So Much Improvement!

Oh, my, gosh, this book was so good! I'm am extremely impressed with Ashley's improved writing. I was a little scared to continue with this series after the first book (cringe city), but I'm so glad I stuck with it as Ashley has improved her characters immensely. I loved to see how Reece slowly progressed throughout this book and Cyrus is my new favorite character, he was so understanding and gentlemanly, and cute! And don't even get me started on how well the voice actors did, music to my ears those voices were. I can't wait to see what else the Ashley Bennett factory will churn out! Enjoy another day of reading, A.

Loved it!!!

I will love anything Liam Price narrates, and now I’ll have to look Jack up! They did perfect bringing these characters to life.

So fricken cute

I loved this. A beautiful slice of life with lovely characters and delightful spicy scenes. Ashley Bennett is quickly becoming a favorite author.

such a cute story

love it. read it first. love the narrators and the emotion was so cute.

Stunning

It was gods but I didn’t make the choice the voice for plehan otherwise it’s good most part

Love this series

I have read all the books in this series so far and love them all. I've made it a goal to support authors and voice actors and get the audiobooks when they come out because books like this give me joy regardless of if I'm reading or listening.

This book is about overcoming fear and bias. It a short romance, but has a lot of heart and of course steamy scenes. It also has a the full cast of characters popping up from the previous book so it was nice to see their stories progressing as well.

My only criticism here is of the narrators - one wasn't good at British accents and the other wasn't good at American accents. it was almost comical the first few times as they both tried putting on voices that were just a stretch too far for them. it wasn't enough to ruin it or be overly distracting, I just found it more amusing than anything else that neither narrator could keep it straight when they had to do the other accent.

Very cute, lighthearted love story

I'm not sure if this is a long novella or a short novel, but either way, it's exactly as long as it should be. T&T takes place in a world where mythical monsters are real and have integrated into human society, mostly successfully. The novel earns points from me for not going with the obvious trope of "all humans are intolerant and awful," which has been done to death. Most humans accept the monsters just fine, or at least as far as we can tell from this one book (I haven't listened to the first one).

The protagonists of this romance are Reece, a handsome, masculine, monster-wary human, and Cyrus, a "kraken" by name but in reality just a sort of octopus dude, not the island-sized legendary monster. The cover, which is WONDERFUL, depicts our two heroes in almost perfect detail, so if you want to know what Cyrus looks like, just take a look there. Cyrus recognizes Reece as his mate early on, but allows the relationship to develop naturally, and Reece has to get over his fear of monsters that has driven a wedge between himself and his sister, who is marrying one. Cyrus is very old (though... young? middle aged? for a monster, we're not entirely sure which), and is a painter of some reknown who has been in a funk but is inspired by his new human love, and Reece is competing in a triathlon that Cyrus is helping him train for.

It's all very cute and angst-free, which is definitely nice sometimes if you're looking for something light. I liked both protagonists, and indeed all the characters, very much. The sex is... a little odd, not really my thing but not distasteful or gross. I did find myself skimming some of the sex scenes, but then I do that with a lot of romance novels, so that isn't anything new. Cyrus is a bit of a dom in the bedroom, though everywhere else they see each other as equals. I don't love the way female authors seem to think gay relationships are inherently imbalanced in favor of the top, but I've seen worse. Altogether I very much enjoyed the romance, which is good because it comprises the entire book.

There really isn't anything resembling an antagonist or even really much of a conflict in the books, and that would be fine, except it leads to a sort of weird situation where I suspect the author felt like she needed to add some. This results in everyone talking about how much Reece has changed, for the better, throughout the book. They say it so frequently that I think a lot of people may be fooled into thinking that it's true. However, I object to the idea that Reece was ever all that bad to begin with; he starts out as sort of a sweetheart with a slight fear of monsters and ends up as the same sweetheart without the fear. He does something marginally rude at the beginning of the book, in response to something Cyrus did that was also marginally rude, and for some reason it brands him as "an ***hole" from all the other characters for the entire first half of the book. Even Cyrus says it at one point, and it just isn't justified based on Reece's behavior. Maybe he was in the first book and was worse, I don't know. But don't try to convince me that he needed to change all that much, because he was pretty outwardly understanding even at the point where he was wary of monsters.

Anyway, that's pretty minor (though enough to knock my review from five stars down to four). In general it's a great book. The narrators are fantastic, though I'll be honest, when Liam Price has to do an American accent (for when Reece is speaking during the Cyrus chapters) it's not great, and neither is Jack Calihan's British accent. Again, super minor complaint. It's a fun, light, cute romance that I enjoyed.

So cute…

Refreshing and sexy. This series is not to be missed. I loved every minute of this gem. I will be listening to this again. I’d love a Cyrus in my life.

It’s ALWAYS the tentacles…

The voice actors were lovely, however the writing of the book made me outwardly cringe at times, making me realize how old I was. However it was still a great listen/read. Perfect human meets artsy little mermaid but gay. ☺️

Character development

I loved this book! I love the story. I loved listening to how the characters change and grow. this book is funny and flirty and fantastic. It's the tentacles 😊