Spider Moth

Contemporary Cryptids, Book 2

By: Amara Lynn

Narrated by: Harley Chase

Length: 3 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

When Callith Morri moves to a tiny yet infamous town in the Pacific northwest to study forestry and find cryptids other than mothman and other East coast legends, he expects to have at least one sasquatch sighting, or perhaps even discover werewolves or vampires hiding among humans as mothpeople do.

Instead, along comes a spider…. person. This webhead isn't anything like a certain famous superhero, though. Spylar is much more unsettling and hair-raising. And yet, Cal finds himself unable to run from them, despite all his instincts telling him to. Cal gets caught up in Spylar's web, and soon he has no desire to escape.

And so a mothman falls in love with a spiderperson, and it's probably a better love story than one between a human and a vampire. Maybe. It's certainly spicer.

Spider Moth is a 26k word contemporary urban fantasy novella in which a trans male mothman and a non-binary spiderperson fall in love, and many Twilight jokes are made, along with a plethora of other pop culture references.

©2023 Amara Lynn (P)2024 Amara Lynn

super cute

This was a cute story. While I found the spiderperson character to be a little flat, this was really Cal the mothman's story. Cal is sort of living out his Twilight fantasy with his new life in the Twilight town and ends up finding love. Was this book full of Twilight references? You betcha. But as someone who has not seen the movies or read the books, I didn't find them to be too much. Listening to the audiobook was like talking to a friend who happens to have an interest in a thing and keeps inserting it into conversation. I'm constantly comparing things to episodes of Star Trek, so I'm hardly one to complain about people and their fandoms. This was a fun read, and I learned a thing or two about spiderperson anatomy 🕷️🍆🍆

A Fun, Quick, Steamy Romance

I should lead this off by saying I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of Twilight. I'm not judging anyone else for it; I'm a big 'let people like what people like' person. I won't belabor it, I just wanted to get it out there.

That being said, I knew going into "Spider Moth" by Amara Lynn that it had a lot of references to Twilight. Some of it's marketing specifically said it was for fans, so I had some trepidation going in.

That being said, what much of the references felt like were the excited gushing of a character (Cal) who found something he truly loved and dove head first in. I can't fault anyone for doing that, much less a fictional character. I have PLENTY of loves and hyperfocuses (hyperfoci?) that annoy the bejesus out of others. Add that to the fact that the romance itself, the story of Cal and Spy actually getting together, was so much sweeter and more interesting, and any frustration with references I might have had simply melted away.

I was head over heels in love with the nonbinary and trans masc representation, and the author handles switching between Spylar's they and he pronouns so well.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. It's a fun, romantic, incredibly steamy romance that all monsterfu—lovers can appreciate. I'm not even going to steer you away from it if you're also a Twilight anti-fan. The joy of seeing someone go on about something they love, how it can permeate their thoughts and world, is always something great to see (though, in all honesty, not sure if I could do a whole novel of it 🤣).

Steamy and sweet shifter romance

This is a fun novella with shout outs to Twilight and other beloved pop culture references which features a romance between a mothman and a spider shifter. The trans and nonbinary rep is done really well, and the romance gets quite steamy. I enjoyed the audiobook narrator’s performance, too.

Amazing story with excellent characters

I loved everything about this story! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started since I’m knew to cryptids but the concept of modern cryptids is so fun. I loved the details in the book, like Cal’s IO Moth form taking on the bright coloring of a male IO Moth when he started transitioning. Spyler is so endearing. The narration is expressive, and the spice is spicyyyy. Loved it!