Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Filthy and the Beast
SERIES: Love Unexpected, Book 4
AUTHOR: R. Cayden
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 285 pages
RELEASE DATE: September 30, 2022
BLURB:
There’s no way in hell I’m falling for a man called the Sledgehammer.
Enzo is a lot of things.
A big grump of a jock.
Twenty years my senior.
My employer.
Straight.
I’m living with the retired boxer while he recovers from an injury, just here to earn a good paycheck after my life fell apart.
Getting emotionally involved with the man isn’t my job, but my gaze keeps lingering on his thick muscles and the storm clouds in his eyes.
For a million reasons, my geeky heart shouldn’t flutter when Enzo walks in the room.
But then he grunts my name, our eyes lock, and the world turns upside down.
Filthy and the Beast is a steamy standalone M/M romance featuring an older, grumpy jock and the bubbly geek who lands in his mansion and upends his life. It’s got a secret sweetheart, surprise temptation, and a touch of angst. The fourth book in Love Unexpected, Filthy and the Beast can be enjoyed alone or as part of the series.
REVIEW:
Filthy and the Beast is the fourth (and I believe the last) book in R. Cayden’s Love Unexpected series. Each book in this series stands on its own and while loosely connected to each other, each is unique. Filthy and the Beast is perhaps the most different and yet confoundingly the tritest of the series. Tropes abound here, employer/employee, age gap, grumpy/sunshine, nerd/jock, forced proximity, and of course it leverages the Beauty and the Beast premise.
Enzo aka the Sledgehammer hires down on his luck, 26-year-old Damian, a close friend of Reggie’s (from Book 2, Filthy Bromance), to live with him and help him recover from an injury. Damian is an adorkable nerd with a sunshiney personality that sparkles even despite his current dire straits. Enzo is a much older (by twenty years), big, muscled, gruff, and purportedly intimidating ex-boxer. He’s lonely, isolated, and definitely grumpy, but Damian’s irresistible and sneaks his way into Enzo’s heart.
In all of these books, Cayden creates two endearing characters and shows how their relationship deepens and strengthens as they bring out the best in each other. Hot scenes abound, but so do sweet, tender moments. Here, though, I found Enzo and Damian to be less complex than other characters in this series, and the romance’s story arc felt forced. Maybe it is because Cayden tries to shoehorn the story into the Beauty and the Beast construct, but the only reason this story is 285 pages is the frankly implausible, frustrating, almost intentional lack of communication between Enzo and Damian. There’s just not a lot of meat on the bones of the story’s framework to keep the reader invested.
Filthy and the Beast is an easy read that’s sweet, funny and enjoyable, and Enzo and Damian are likeable. But they didn’t sizzle as a couple, and the storyline didn’t captivate, resulting in a romance that in my opinion is just okay.
RATING: 
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