I Married a Minotaur, is the latest book in the Prime Mating Agency series by Regine Abel, and I gotta tell you, I am living for it. 

Technically, this book is not a sequel, and you do not have to read any of the others books in this series to know what is going on.  That being said, I do highly recommend you read I Married a Birdman before you read this book, as some of the characters overlap and it will help you understand the plot of this book better. 

This book centers around our feisty heroine Rihanna, who has just been sentenced to spend the next twenty years of her life in one of the worst prisons around.  Even worse, she did not even commit the crime she is going to jail for.  However, at the last minute she is offered a proposition from the Prime Mating Agency.  Rather than spend the next twenty years in a jail sentence, she could get married instead.

The someone ends up being Zartuk, the “minotaur” of our story.  Zartuk is not actually a minotaur, but instead of the species Yurus.  He is currently the Chief of a tribe, and trying to find a way to make not only his tribe, but all of the tribes of his species more successful.

It will come of no surprise that I loved this book.  Not only do I love what Regine Abel writes, but I also love quite a few of the things that she did in this book.  For starters, I love when authors writing a series with different main characters reference past main characters.  For instance, there was a brief mention of the characters from I Married a Naga in this book, which was incredibly welcomed.  In addition, while I did say this was not a direct sequel, it does follow the sequence of events from I Married a Birdman, and follows up on the hanging plot points that I was curious about or wanted to know what might happen with.

I think one of the things that Regine Abel does best, is painting a world with new species, and helping you as the reader fall in love with the species she has created.  And I am not talking just romantic love (though for some of the characters how could you not) but essentially the species and their flaws.  The Yurus are a species of people that have to fight.  Not want too, have to, for reasons that are explained incredibly well in the book.  You as the reader are never sitting there going “this does not make sense; did I miss something” as I find happens quite often in books I read.  If I am reading a book, I do not want to have to go and search for the answers.  While she is revealing this information, she is not info dumping on the reader either, which is also something I see happen quite a lot in books.  Somehow, she manages to find a fantastic balance again and again while creating new species of characters.

If I had to pick something bad about this book, it is that it introduces a lot of side characters that you are going to become incredibly fascinated with, but will be disappointed when you do not get to follow their stories.  If Regine Abel follows the path that she currently does, she does not write more than one story for each species, leaving you are the reader kind of stuck if there is more you want to know, or more you want to see about the world. In this book especially this feels as though I am being short changed as the reader, because I very much want to see how the fighting arena ends up impacting the area

Overall – I do think this is an excellent book, and if you are looking for a romance novel that is not quite like something you have ever read before, I highly recommend this. That being said, as much as I love this book, and as much as I love this author, if you cannot get past the fact that all of the characters are not human, I don’t know that I would take the time to read this.

Plot – 10/10

Characters – 10/10

Originality –  10/10

General Joy of Reading – 10/10

Overall Score – 40/40

I Married a Minotaur by Regine Abel

Cost* – $3.99 for Kindle, $14.99 paperback.  This book is included with Kindle Unlimited

*Cost is based upon what the book cost when book review is published