Verdict: A sapphic monster romance set at a human-and-inhuman band camp in the West Virginia woods — charming, genuinely spicy and unexpectedly pointed about prejudice and land theft, let down by a plot that keeps re-explaining itself.
Best for: Readers who want cosy-but-creepy summer camp atmosphere with a faun heroine, explicit heat and real-world politics under the fantasy, and who will forgive repetition for vibes.
Heat level: ★★★★☆ (4/5 — romance.io rates it explicit open door, and readers back it enthusiastically)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.17 Goodreads average with a specific and repeated complaint about over-explaining)
Tropes: Monster romance, forbidden love across species, summer camp, forced proximity, opposites attract, small-town land conspiracy, prejudice and passing, dual POV, cosy horror, series opener.
Faun Over Me is B.L. Brown’s self-published opener to Camp Cryptid — a 321-page sapphic monster romance set at Elkwater Music Camp in the Monongahela National Forest, where Avery Payne, a sheltered human conductor working a summer job to qualify for a Carnegie Mellon masters, meets Cricket, a faun who has come down out of the woods to find her missing cousin and is being hunted across the ridgelines by something neither of them can name.
It holds a 4.17 average across 219 Goodreads ratings and 4.4 across 138 on Amazon, with 79% at four stars or above and effectively no one-star ratings. The middle of that distribution is where the argument lives: 16% land on three stars, and they are not describing a book they disliked so much as one they thought was half as long as it needed to be. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.
What Is Faun Over Me About?
This is monster romance in its cosy rather than its dark register, and the setting is doing something specific with the subgenre. Monster romance usually isolates its couple — one human, one creature, nobody else around to have an opinion. Brown does the opposite: Elkwater is the only integrated human-and-inhuman band camp in the country, so the relationship happens inside an institution built to manage exactly this question, surrounded by people with views about it. That turns the fantasy into a social novel almost by accident.
Avery is introduced through sheltering rather than lack — talented, disciplined, raised entirely among humans, and about to enter an integrated campus with no idea how to behave in one. Cricket is the reverse: she has spent her life in the forest and wants her family to have a permanent home among humans, which makes her the one arguing for integration and Avery the one who has to be taught it. The book runs dual POV in third person, and that inversion is the smartest thing in it.
What Makes This Sapphic Monster Romance Work
- The premise: A band camp for humans and cryptids in the Monongahela National Forest is a genuinely fresh setting, and it is the thing readers name first — several describe buying it on the concept alone.
- Cricket: The faun is the runaway favourite in the reviews. Readers who were unsure about Avery say they loved Cricket immediately.
- The politics underneath: Property sales pushing a family out of the woods is a land-grab plot, and reviewers specifically credit Brown for weaving prejudice, oppression, classism and religious trauma into a book that markets itself as cute.
- The heat: romance.io bands it 4/5 explicit open door and readers are emphatic — “the spice was fire” is a direct quote, and the physicality is written around the fantasy anatomy rather than despite it.
- The tone mix: “Kinda cosy, kinda scary” is how one reader put it, and the balance of summer-camp warmth against something stalking the ridgelines is what makes the atmosphere work.
Book Synopsis
Avery Payne has one summer to fix a gap in her application. She wants a Masters of Music at Carnegie Mellon, she has the training and the talent, and she has one problem: Carnegie is an integrated campus, and Avery has spent her entire life in human-only rooms. Sixteen weeks as Assistant Director of Elkwater Music Camp — the only human and inhuman band camp in the country — is the fastest way to acquire an experience she should already have. It is also sixteen weeks in the Monongahela National Forest, which is further from anything than she has ever been.
Cricket has spent her whole life in those woods, and she has spent most of it arguing with her family about leaving them. Fauns do not integrate; her cousin did, and is the only one who ever has. When property sales start pushing her family off land they have always lived on, Cricket decides the argument is over and goes to find the cousin who can make the case for her. She does not find him. What she finds is that something is moving through the forest behind her, and that it is faster over a ridgeline than she is.
Elkwater is where those two problems meet. The roads out are closed, Cricket’s cousin is gone, and the camp’s red-headed assistant director keeps turning up wherever Cricket is trying not to be seen. When whatever is in the forest starts circling the camp itself, the two of them are the only people looking at the same set of facts — a missing faun, a hunting thing nobody will describe, and a pattern of land sales around Green Bank that makes considerably more sense if somebody wanted the woods emptied. The question underneath is older than the monster: what a person is owed by a world that has decided she does not belong in it.
My Review
The premise is the best thing here and it earns the attention it gets. A summer camp where human and cryptid teenagers learn ensemble music together is a lovely idea on its own, and Brown does the harder thing with it — she uses the camp as a machine for putting prejudice on the page without lecturing. Avery has to learn how to be in an integrated room. Cricket has to decide whether integration is worth what it costs. The romance runs through that argument rather than around it, which is more than most monster romance attempts.
The second strength is how completely the tone lands. Readers describe the book as cosy and scary at once, and both halves are real: there is genuine summer-camp warmth — instrument cases, cabins, a director who is trying — and there is a thing in the trees that the book treats seriously. One reviewer who expected something PG-13 from the cover reported being surprised by how sinister the mystery turned out to be, and by how directly it engages with racism and class. The cover promises cute; the book is cute and then it is not.
Where it struggles is the plot mechanics, and this is the dominant complaint rather than an outlier. The specific charge is repetition: one detailed two-star review says the dialogue dragged, restating the same information over and over, and that whatever was interesting in the plot was over-explained “to the point of babying the reader” — her conclusion is that half the book felt like a rehash of itself. A three-star reader put it more bluntly, calling it a lovely sapphic romance ruined by a mediocre plot. That is 16% at three stars and 3% at two, and they are all describing the same thing.
The related criticism is depth. The same two-star reviewer noted the world felt story-rich in the early chapters and the characters had real intrigue, and that both thinned out as the book went on. She also flagged, memorably, that the phrase “oak and ivy” appears often enough to become an irritant. Another reader found the plot familiar — something she had read a hundred times — while agreeing the writing itself was not bad. None of this is a book that fails; it is a book whose second half does less than its first half promised.
One expectation to set rather than reset: the heat is real. romance.io bands it 4/5 explicit open door, one reader itemised her spice rating at three peppers and called the scenes fire, and the physical writing takes the faun anatomy as a feature rather than an embarrassment. If you came from the cover expecting closed-door cosy fantasy, adjust upward.
My honest note: A terrific setting and a genuinely charming pair of leads, inside a plot that says everything twice. Read it for Elkwater, Cricket and the politics; skim when it starts explaining itself again.
| Element | In Faun Over Me |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Avery Payne & Cricket — a sheltered human conductor and a faun who wants a home among humans |
| Core tropes | Monster romance, forbidden love across species, summer camp, forced proximity, opposites attract, land conspiracy |
| Setting | Elkwater Music Camp in the Monongahela National Forest — the only human and inhuman band camp in the nation |
| Heat level | 4/5 — explicit open door |
| Series | Camp Cryptid book 1 — the mystery resolves; the series continues |
| Content notes | Prejudice and species-based oppression, religious trauma, displacement and land theft, a stalking predator, some gore, explicit sexual content |
How Spicy Is Faun Over Me?
romance.io bands it at 4 out of 5 and labels it explicit open door, and the readers are unusually vocal in agreement. One reviewer who runs a full itemised rubric put spice at three out of five on her own scale and then described the scenes as fire — “all touching and teasing, moans and please, sensitive ears and sexy women.” The relevant detail there is “sensitive ears”: the book writes Cricket’s faun physiology into the intimacy rather than politely ignoring it, which is the whole point of the subgenre and the thing monster-romance readers are checking for.
The thing worth flagging in advance is thematic rather than sexual. The novel deals directly with prejudice, oppression and religious trauma, and the land-grab plot is a displacement story with real teeth. No reviewer describes it as dark, but nobody describes it as fluffy either. For the same band, With Wing and Claw and Goddess of the Sea both sit at 4/5 explicit open door with a similar balance of plot and heat.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: a human-and-cryptid band camp sounds like the best premise you have heard this year, you want monster romance where the anatomy is a feature, you like cosy atmosphere with something genuinely unpleasant in the trees, and social themes under a cute cover are a bonus.
You may want to skip it if: repetition wears you down, you want a plot you have not seen before, you need characters to keep deepening through the second half, or the phrase “oak and ivy” is going to start following you around.
In short: one of the most likeable premises on this list, executed at three-quarter strength — and most readers decide the camp is worth it.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
There is no viral moment behind this book, but the discovery pattern is unusually physical: more than one reviewer reports picking it up in a bookshop on the strength of the cover and the phrase “sapphic monster summer camp romance,” which is not how most indie sapphic fantasy travels. It has 219 Goodreads ratings and 92 written reviews after two years, no trade coverage, no Reddit footprint and no audiobook — Libro.fm does not stock it. The engine here is word of mouth and a premise that survives being described in one sentence.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The setting first — the camp is what readers describe when asked what the book is, and several bought it on that alone. Cricket second, and by a clear margin: reviewers who took time to warm to Avery say they loved the faun from the start, and at least one names her as the favourite outright. Third is the tonal balance, with “kinda cosy, kinda scary” recurring almost word for word across separate reviews. Fourth, and the one that surprises readers most, is the substance underneath: prejudice, oppression and religious trauma are all named approvingly by readers who expected none of them, and one reviewer who assumed from the cover that it would be Disney-Channel light reports finding a mystery that is sinister, racist and classist in its concerns. The heat is fifth and enthusiastically endorsed.
What readers argue about and complain about: Repetition, above everything, and the mechanism is spelled out in the sharpest review the book has: the dialogue restates information the reader already has, and the plot is over-explained “to the point of babying the reader,” leaving half the book feeling like a rehash of the other half. Second, and connected: thinning depth. The same reviewer found the early chapters story-rich and the characters intriguing, and watched both flatten as the novel went on. Third: familiarity. One three-star reader liked the writing and said the plot was something she had read a hundred times before, and another called it a lovely romance ruined by a mediocre plot line — the split there is that nobody is criticising the prose. Fourth, and small but genuinely repeated: “oak and ivy” is used often enough that a reviewer led her entire review with it. The real split is between readers reading for atmosphere, who rate it four and five, and readers reading for plot, who do not.
The series question everyone should ask first: The Elkwater mystery closes, and no reviewer reports a cliffhanger — the three-star reviews complain about the plot being thin rather than unfinished, which is the opposite problem. Camp Cryptid is built as a series, and the setting is the kind that supports one: a camp with a rotating population and a forest full of things that have not been introduced yet. If you want one self-contained cosy monster romance and nothing further, this works alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How spicy is Faun Over Me?
A 4/5. romance.io rates it explicit open door, and readers are emphatic about it — one described the scenes as fire, and the book writes Cricket’s faun physiology into the intimacy rather than working around it.
Does Faun Over Me end on a cliffhanger?
No. The Elkwater mystery resolves. The critical reviews complain the plot is thin rather than unfinished, which is the opposite problem.
Is Faun Over Me a monster romance?
Yes, in the cosy register rather than the dark one. Cricket is a faun, the camp is built for humans and cryptids together, and the fantasy anatomy is treated as a feature of the romance.
Is there a Faun Over Me audiobook?
Not as of August 2026. Libro.fm does not stock it and no audio edition is listed elsewhere, which is common for self-published monster romance.
Is Faun Over Me on Kindle Unlimited?
Yes. It is currently borrowable with a Kindle Unlimited membership, which is a low-risk way to test whether the repetition bothers you.
Is Faun Over Me as light as the cover suggests?
No, and readers say so repeatedly. Under the summer-camp warmth it deals with prejudice, oppression, religious trauma and a land-theft plot, and one reviewer who expected something PG-13 found the mystery genuinely sinister.
If You Loved Faun Over Me, Read These Next
She Came for the Pack runs the same human-meets-inhuman-community dynamic at a hotter setting, Elmwood Inclusive Magic Academy shares the integrated-institution premise with witches and shifters instead of cryptids, and Goddess of the Sea matches the 4/5 explicit open-door band in a different mythology. More in forbidden love lesbian romance and across all our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
Faun Over Me sets out to be a cosy monster romance with something real underneath it, and it succeeds on three counts: Elkwater is one of the best settings in indie sapphic fantasy, Cricket is a heroine readers fall for immediately, and the prejudice-and-land-theft plot gives a cute book a spine. What it does not manage is a plot that trusts its reader, characters who keep developing past the halfway mark, or a story you have not met before — and a fifth of its readers say so directly. If atmosphere and heat are what you read for, this is an easy recommendation. Check Faun Over Me on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Faun Over Me ranks as a charming cosy sapphic monster romance with unexpected teeth — brilliantly set and properly spicy, constrained by repetition and a familiar plot, and best approached for the camp, Cricket and the politics rather than for narrative surprise.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 4.17 average across 219 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 4.4 on Amazon across 138 ratings
- ✓ 4.60 on romance.io, its highest band of praise
- ✓ 19% at three stars or below on repetition
Romance ★★★★☆ 4.2/5
- ✓ Integration argument runs through the romance
- ✓ Cricket wants in, Avery has to learn how
- ✓ Physicality written around faun anatomy
- ✓ Relationship beats are familiar by design
Characters ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Cricket is the runaway favourite in reviews
- ✓ Avery’s unlearning of her father is credited
- ✓ Camp staff give the cast somewhere to stand
- ✓ A reviewer reports both leads thinning after halfway
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ Prose itself is not criticised by anyone
- ✓ Cosy-and-scary tonal balance sustained
- ✓ Humour lands for most reviewers
- ✓ Dialogue restates information repeatedly
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Prejudice and oppression handled without lecturing
- ✓ Religious trauma named approvingly by readers
- ✓ Land theft gives the fantasy real stakes
- ✓ Over-explanation blunts the later reveals
Heat Level ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ romance.io bands it 4/5 explicit open door
- ✓ “The spice was fire” is a direct quote
- ✓ Faun physiology treated as a feature
- ✓ Cover implies something far tamer
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ The Elkwater mystery resolves cleanly
- ✓ No cliffhanger reported by any reviewer
- ✓ Camp setting supports a series naturally
- ✓ Resolution described as predictable by some
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Setting is the most-quoted thing about it
- ✓ Cosy-horror atmosphere rewards a summer reread
- ✓ Series continues in the same camp
- ✓ No audiobook, and repetition is worse on a reread
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