Review | Morning Glory Milking Farm – C.M. Nacosta

About the Book

Violet is a typical, down-on-her-luck millennial: mid-twenties, over-educated and drowning in debt, on the verge of moving into her parent’s basement. When a lifeline appears in the form of a very unconventional job in neighboring Cambric Creek, she has no choice but to grab at it with both hands. 

Morning Glory Milking Farm offers full-time hours, full benefits, and generous pay with no experience needed . . . there’s only one catch. The clientele is Grade A certified prime beef, with the manly, meaty endowments to match. Milking minotaurs isn’t something Violet ever considered as a career option, but she’s determined to turn the opportunity into a reversal of fortune.

When a stern, deep-voiced client begins to specially request her for his milking sessions, maintaining her professionalism and keeping him out of her dreams is easier said than done. Violet is resolved to make a dent in her student loans and afford name-brand orange juice, and a one-sided crush on an out-of-her-league minotaur is not a part of her plan—unless her feelings aren’t so one-sided after all.

Morning Glory Milking Farm is a short human/monster romance novel, featuring a high heat slow burn with a lot of heart, and a guaranteed HEA. CWs include: cock milking, non-human anatomy, size difference, and a lot of fluid. It is the first book in the Cambric Creek monster romance series, and can be read as a standalone. 

250 pages (paperback)
Published on August 3, 2021
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I am an editor. The main genre I edit is fantasy. What you may or may not know, is that the second genre I mainly edit happens to be erotica. Don’t ask me how that happened, it just did. Now, I don’t read erotica. It doesn’t really appeal to me as a genre, and I generally struggle with it. That might be why I’m good at editing it: I don’t get distracted by the sex. Anyway, I like to know what’s going on in the genres I edit, so when I have an erotica novel coming down the pipe at me, and I know generally what it’s about beforehand, I typically try to find a popular book or two on Kindle Unlimited to read so I can sort of educate myself about what’s working in the genre regarding this particular trope, and what to watch out for as I edit. 

Which is how I found myself reading Morning Glory Milking Farm. I had an erotica coming down the pipe. It had a certain trope. I went on KU to see if I could find anything somewhere in the same neighborhood as what I was about to edit and uh… yeah. There I was, reading a book about a bunch of minotaurs getting milked at Morning Glory Milking Farm on their lunch breaks, after work, before work, etc. Their spunk is then used for medicine, and they get compensated for their time. Love happens, and there’s a happily ever after. It’s an erotica, so there’s graphic content and plenty of equally graphic details, dirty talk, etc. is all present.

Why am I writing a review about this book? I got into a conversation today with one of my (epic fantasy) authors. I made a snarky comment on someone’s Facebook post and a second later a message popped up, “I saw your comment on (insert person here’s) post. Have you read Morning Glory Milking Farm? It’s an erotica but also a satire on modern ills like crushing student debt, healthcare, and etc.” And you know what? It is. The book, when you get down to it, is pretty genius, as it does somehow manage to tackle a lot of complex issues in a way that never strays from lighthearted. And there are graphic scenes on nearly every page (I mean, she works on a farm where dudes get strapped to tables and… yeah) to keep those who enjoy that kind of thing hooked. 

I guess the main reason I’m writing this review is to showcase how sometimes you can find really unexpected treats in seriously unpredictable places if you stray out of your comfort zone a bit. 

Satire is an art, and it can be hard for people to nail it down. Terry Pratchett was, in my estimation, one of the greats when it came to satire and the ability to poke holes in serious issues without being extremely offensive about it. As he famously said, “Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it’s not satire, it’s bullying.” That’s the line that people often cross, sometimes without meaning to. It’s hard to pin down, and with such minefields as social media around, it’s harder and harder to be able to say anything about any topic without offending someone, somehow, even unintentionally. An author who can manage that is skilled indeed. 

And maybe that’s what surprised me most about this book. It’s smutty and graphic in all the ways readers of erotica want, with a bad-mouthed, hard-working minotaur love interest who is coming out of a divorce and a woman who is working at a milking farm for said minotaurs to make ends meet. There are moments throughout the book which were flat-out funny. Training new employees on how to uh… do their job, for one (I could almost feel how awkward that entire situation was, which was fantastic). And then there were some interesting requests by some of the clientele which kept things uh… quirky. The interest between Violent and Rourke is slow at first, but soon their attraction is evident, and all the right romance/erotica beats are hit at the right points in the story. 

All of that is as it should be for an erotica book. Where the author takes this erotica and elevates it a bit is all the other details she wove in there so effortlessly. Rarely have a I seen a world in erotica built this well. Here, humans and other species you hear about in urban fantasy or paranormal books live side-by-side, are friends, have neighborhood block parties. From minotaurs to vampires, you’ll find a lot of beasties and creatures in this book, all of whom coexist peacefully, living their lives as best they can. It’s all so… normal.

There are no show-stopping sexpots in this book (Or maybe I’m just not attracted enough to men in general to notice. A distinct possibility.). In fact, the mundanity, the normalcy, the shocking amount of “this is just the way this world works” was a factor of the story that kept it well-rooted and easy to relate to. Entertaining, even. I wasn’t so much reading about this other world, as I was reading about a world I fundamentally related to, because aside from the fantasy creatures sprinkled throughout it, it’s essentially the world I live in. 

Perhaps it was the “other” of nearly everyone in this fantasy-esque modern world that made the common problems they all faced stand out more, and perhaps that is why this book worked so well. The erotic factors were so perfectly balanced with this fascinating worldbuilding where not a detail was overlooked. More, the issues that the satire worked so well with—the crushing student debt, the need for healthcare, the cost of living—were covered in such a way that the fundamental humanity of all those facing these issues leveled the paranormal playing field. It’s hard to talk about these issues, especially now, when they seem to polarize everyone so quickly, yet somehow Nacosta managed it. 

It’s more than just adding romance and sex to the plot, though. I was truly fascinated by the worldbuilding, by the details, by how the author managed to take a book that was lighthearted and fun, never lose that lighthearted, fun aspect of it. Yet still manage to talk about real world issues that dramatically impact people’s lives and the decisions they make. 

I wish I could say something about Nacosta’s signature wit or something clever like that, but the truth is, I have no idea who this author is or what they have written aside from this book. I stumbled upon this on accident when I was doing some “homework” reading before an edit job landed on my desk, and this one fit the bill. I read picked it randomly and read it in one sitting, staying up far too late to finish the story. 

It’s erotica at its core. Minotaur men get strapped to tables and… yeah. So yes, there is graphic content. There is dirty talk. Fluid is both a noun and a verb in this one. Nothing is glossed over. But that wasn’t what kept me rooted to my chair. What kept me turning pages was the substance, the snark, the wry, witty humor, the Pratchett-like satire, the flawless writing, the detail-laden worldbuilding. How unexpected the entire book really was.  

Admittedly, I’m not a big erotica reader, but this one came out of left field and delighted me in a way no erotica book ever has before. The last thing I expected was to read a book about milking minotaur men and leave it thinking about how healthcare and tuition costs impact things like job performance. 

So, uh… yeah. I’ve been running this website for twelve years, and now I’ve written my first erotica review.