Cavo is a monster who can’t even stand to look at himself and he’s never known any kind of companionship in the forest in which he lives. One day, he watches a group of men attack an older man, all human, and he intervenes to help, expecting to scare them all off. The man he helps, named Liam, is quite appreciative of Cavo’s actions and even finds him attractive in ways Cavo never expected. And so this monster-meets-beast story begins as the two journey together, since it turns out that Liam has even more enemies chasing behind him than the ones Cavo has already seen.
While the variety of monster boy/girl romances being published in English has expanded — now you can find straight, BL, or yuri romances easily — most of the characters by and large remain dewey-faced youngsters. Manga creator Renji says in her author notes however she wanted to read “a Boys’ Love fantasy manga featuring a middle-aged guy and an inhuman creature” and, when she couldn’t find one, she made one instead! As readers might surmise from the title, the demon Cavo has a (supposedly) hideous appearance but a mild temperament, especially compared to the sly and smooth operator Liam, a human with greying hair but youthful energy. Liam is a playboy who is able to catch the attention of anyone he wants to be with, male or female, and that’s without his geas-like power of compulsion. Not only does the recalcitrant and shy Cavo provide an interesting change of pace for Liam, Liam also seems to genuinely be interested in Cavo’s body.
While Cavo doesn’t know much about his own history — he simply awoke one day in the woods — Liam is actively cagey about why he’s on the run from what appear to be knights of a neighboring kingdom. It’s simple enough for both Cavo and the readers to surmise that Liam got involved with someone he shouldn’t have (probably royalty) and did something he probably shouldn’t have (and while that might be as simple as sex, it probably has to do with his magical ability). As one would expect for a romance, most of the time is spent establishing and growing the relationship between the two, sometimes through Liam going into dangerous situations and sometimes by Liam introducing strange and wonderful new foods to Cavo.
For me, there wasn’t anything bad about this story but I found Cavo and Liam to be a bit too simplistic to become invested in and just didn’t develop a strong attachment to Monster and the Beast as a result. I’m mildly curious about what awaits them next on their journey, especially since the series has a habit of ending on cliffhangers, but I doubt I’ll remember much about the story after another month or two of reading other series.