Audiobook Review: Guarded by the Spider (Monster Security Agency, #3) by Cassie Alexander. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Guarded by the Spider: by Cassie Alexander

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For my kind, to be without a mate is to be doomed. I know it is too late–all that awaits me is retirement and death, and I’ve embraced it.

But when a suicide mission lands on my old boss’s desk, I’m the one he calls. Who better to tackle the mission in the deep, oppressive mines of my own ancestral homeland, if not an Arachnae already slated to die? And it’s not a rescue mission–he wants me to retrieve the corpse of a billionaire’s daughter kidnapped by a terrorist organization.

Except our intel was wrong.

She’s alive. Tortured and injured–but alive.

And from the moment I scent her, I am certain she’s my mate.

She cowers in fear when she sees me, yet I will stop at nothing to protect her.

And now that I have a reason to live…a whole lot of people are going to die.

Monster Security Agency is the most elite bodyguard service in the world. These monster bodyguards are lethal, powerful, and determined to protect their clients at all costs. They shouldn’t fall in love with their principals, but if they do? Things are bound to explode.
Guarded by the Spider

Surprisingly good!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙💜❤️💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 🙂🥰😎😄
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The Hero: Nia’n’an (a.k.a. Nine) – he is an arachnea (spider monster) and works for the Monster Security Agency. Though he retired and plans to just die in peace in his apartment. His kind tend to die of loneliness if they live past a certain age without finding a mate, and he knows his time is coming. When all the sudden, his boss knocks on the door. They have a ten-million-dollar job to rescue the daughter of a very rich man who was kidnapped and is being held in a place where Nine is the only monster who can access safely.

The heroine: Sloane – she was the dyslexic daughter of a super-genius and one of the richest men in the world. She originally had plans and goals for her life, but she ended up being a wealthy singer and party girl and a disappointment as the only heir of her father. When she is out having a concert with friends and fans, she is kidnapped and witnesses the murder of her friends. She feels it is all her fault for being who she is. She is taken hostage deep into the forest for days and overhears her captors get angry when her father refuses to pay the ransom twice.

The Story: When Nine finds Sloane, he knows immediately that she is his mate. Though his death was still close, he had to fully mate with his woman before he died. Nine and Sloane had to go through quite a journey to get her back to civilization. He found her in the Threadstone mountains which are full of all kinds of vicious monsters. Sloane had a broken ankle and couldn’t walk, so Nine had to protect her and carry her out.

Like the other books of this series I have read, you have to put your gross factor out of your mind a bit to read this one. I like alien romance because the aliens are mainly humanoid, though usually different colors, and some with tails and/or horns, but you can easily picture them as very human-like. As with much monster romance, unless they are shifters, which they aren’t in this series, the monsters are often as much like their snake, spider, or whatever counterparts as they are humanoid. They have humanoid upper bodies, and sometimes weird facial features, like slits for ears instead of human-like ears, different tongues and such. Though like in this book, his lower body was so spider-like with eight legs. I have to admit, that like in Guarded by the Snake, I liked the fact that the monster “packages” were not always humanoid. It certainly made the intimate scenes fun.

Even though monsters are well known and integrated into society in this series, there isn’t that much species commingling going on in the world. So, Sloane has a reaction to Nine like you would expect when they first meet. She is like ewww, yuk, when she gets close to his spider legs. I was a bit surprised at how fast she overcame it though. I know it helps that he was protecting her and basically carrying her, but she starts to want him a lot sooner than I would expect. Especially considering that his translator device broke, so she couldn’t understand him. Luckily, he could understand her, and the fact that she didn’t know he could understand her made things kind of funny at times.

This audiobook was done in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Jonathon Lake and Avery Caris. They did a fantastic job. Jonathon Lake has a deep voice that worked very well for the spider monster. Avery Caris has a youthful sounding voice that was perfect for Sloane. She is very expressive, and I really enjoyed the narration, and the story was very good. I wish more of this series was available on Audiobook.

Blog|Goodreads|Facebook|Instagram|Twitter|BookBub

View all my reviews