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Book Review of Home the Hard Way, by Z. A. Maxfield

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Home the Hard Way

The nice folks over at Netgalley sent me an ARC of Home the Hard Way, by Z. A. Maxfield.

Description from Goodreads:
Dare Buckley has come home—or at least, he’s come back to Palladian, the small town he left as a teenager. After a major lapse in judgment forced him to resign from the Seattle PD, Palladian is the only place that’ll hire him. There’s one benefit to hitting rock bottom, though: the chance to investigate the mystery of his father’s suicide.

Dare also gets to reacquaint himself with Finn Fowler, whose childhood hero worship ended in uncomfortable silence when Dare moved away. But Finn isn’t the same little kid Dare once protected. He’s grown into an attractive, enigmatic stranger who neither wants nor needs what Dare has to offer.

In fact, Dare soon realizes that Finn’s keeping secrets—his own and the town’s. And he doesn’t seem to care that Dare needs answers. The atmosphere in Palladian, like its namesake river, appears placid, but dark currents churn underneath. When danger closes in, Dare must pit his ingenuity against his heart, and find his way home the hard way.

Review:
I’m having a hard time deciding how I feel about this book. I finished it last night, with time to review it, but waited until today in order to consider my own response to it. You see, I can’t decide if I didn’t like certain aspects of the story full stop or if I just didn’t like that it wasn’t the story I wanted it to be (if that distinction makes any sense outside of my head). 

Before I talk more about that let me add here that I like erotica. Not that I would qualify this as erotica, there isn’t that much sex in it. But my point is that I have no problem with sex in books. I like a lot of m/m romances. I also like finding a little surprise kink thrown into either one. So, my complaint isn’t based just on not liking D/s, BDSM, rope and/or pain play in the book. (Though, I have to admit, anytime a character refers to something by its name, like ‘pain play,’ it feels too proper to be realistic to me. It rings the same cringe-bell as stiff dialogue in my head. But that’s a whole ‘nother matter altogether.)

Having said all that, I didn’t like the BDSM, etc. aspect of this book. I think it was probably well written; that’s not my complaint. And it was kinda hot; that’s not my beef either. It just didn’t feel natural in the story. This is the first Z. A. Maxfield book I’ve ever read, so I’m not coming from a place of comparative knowledge. But to me it FELT like it was all thrown in just to catch readers from the current D/s popularity wave. I don’t know if it really was, but that’s how it felt to me.

You see, Dare comes home to Palladian with no discernible interest in being dominated in any fashion. Doesn’t even seem to be consciously aware of the lifestyle. But on meeting up with Finn he immediately starts wanting things he’s never wanted before. He allows Finn control he’d never previously even considered giving up and he does it with no discussion, explanation or even verbal request (from either party). Now, consent is very clearly established, as are stop words and such. I don’t mean anything like that. I just mean there must have been some psychic communication going on for Finn to know what Dare wanted and for Dare to know Finn could/would provide it, especially on Dare’s part.

I did like Dare and Finn. Don’t get me wrong. I liked them. I just kept thinking that the things they were doing didn’t fit the otherwise sweet romance that was trying desperately to establish itself. This is also were my ‘did I just not like it’ or ‘did I not like that the blurb sent me in expecting something else’ internal debate comes in. Either way, it was jarring to me. 

Then there was the whole Fraser twist. Surprisingly, I also like Fraser. I had fewer problems with he and Finn’s activities than Finn and Dare’s. It felt more natural there, maybe because it had had years to develop. However, unless there is going to be a sequel that deals with Fraser and his issues I’d have to call it a giant loose end. 

I also liked the, I believe the phrase is penetration politics. Dare is your average hulking police alpha (as is Fraser), Finn is as you would expect. He’s smaller, finer boned, prettier, gayer (or at least more openly so). Based on m/m norms you would expect Dare & Fraser to top almost exclusively. It was nice to see this trope played with.

The mystery was a good one. It wasn’t too hard to figure the historic aspect of it out. It was pretty obvious, actually. But that obviousness just made the part happening in ‘real-time’ more interesting because you had this tantalising part of the puzzle that Dare didn’t. 

The writing and editing were both pretty good. I was a bit bothered by all the full names. Palladian is meant to be a pretty small town and everyone’s supposed to have known each other since childhood. So I can’t imagine they’d so often need a full name to identify someone. I also thought the author had a few catchall phrases she repeated (the plug & socket comparison, for example). But really these are minuscule complaints in the grand scheme of things. 

I’m feeling fairly torn about how I feel or how I want to rate this book. So, I’m splitting the difference with a 3 and a bit.

Hell & High Water

Book Review of Hell & High Water, by Charlie Cochet

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Hell & High WaterI bought a copy of Charlie Cochet‘s Hell & High Water.

Description from Goodreads:

When homicide detective Dexter J. Daley’s testimony helps send his partner away for murder, the consequences—and the media frenzy—aren’t far behind. He soon finds himself sans boyfriend, sans friends, and, after an unpleasant encounter in a parking garage after the trial, he’s lucky he doesn’t find himself sans teeth. Dex fears he’ll get transferred from the Human Police Force’s Sixth Precinct, or worse, get dismissed. Instead, his adoptive father—a sergeant at the Therian-Human Intelligence Recon Defense Squadron otherwise known as the THIRDS—pulls a few strings, and Dex gets recruited as a Defense Agent.

Dex is determined to get his life back on track and eager to get started in his new job. But his first meeting with Team Leader Sloane Brodie, who also happens to be his new jaguar Therian partner, turns disastrous. When the team is called to investigate the murders of three HumaniTherian activists, it soon becomes clear to Dex that getting his partner and the rest of the tightknit team to accept him will be a lot harder than catching the killer—and every bit as dangerous.

Review:
Oh, Dissappointment, we meet again. I was let down by this book. Not necessarily because it was a bad book, but because it wasn’t the book I wanted it to be, the book I expected it to be. I was expecting something like Cut & Run orCatch a Ghost. (Heck, Catch a Ghost is even book one of the Hell or High Waterseries, so thinking Hell & High Water would be similar isn’t that much of a stretch.) From the books blurb, I expected to watch two gruff, alpha males manage not to kill one another long enough to have a touch of hot steaming sex and maybe solve a mystery when they have their pants on. 

Nope, what I got was one brooding but fragile, emotionally damaged alpha male and one loud mouthed twink, who basically just talked incessantly and shook his ass at his partner until he gave in and fucked him. Now, I generally like both types of characters, but Dex didn’t start the book all light and airy-like. He just kind of randomly morphed into it about a third of the way in and I had a really hard time fitting the latter into the role of an elite soldier/police officer. (THIRDS is part of the military, but functions as a police force. I don’t know.) It might have worked had Dex not been so ridiculous about it all. He hides nothing. He filters nothing. He ignores all rules (of fraternisation and decorum). And that’s all on his first day.

In a way that was a big part of the problem. Most of us have had at least one first day at a new job. You’re nervous, right? Not good ‘ol Dex. He’s loud, proud and cocky. He joshes his new coworkers with abandon, makes lascivious jokes at and about them, plays pranks, and amazingly manages to garner a complete understanding of team dynamics in mere minutes.

No one gets angry though. He doesn’t get disciplined. He isn’t even seen as the type of employee an employer hustles out the door. He is apparently utterly immune to normal expectations of behaviour. Plus, that first day went on and on, with a lot happening. No day or two of orientation for the THIRDS. Nope, it’s right out into the field and giving orders for Dex, rookieness be damned.

Now, I’ll admit part of this is a personal issue. I hate when authors let some characters get away with disregarding proper respect of the chain of command or aggress on alpha characters without the consequences all other characters would face. It annoys me. It especially annoys me when whole plots are based on this ability. It doesn’t feel legitimate or believable. And the progression ofHell & High Water‘s plot hinges almost entirely on Dex’s ability to ‘charm’ (if that’s what such annoyances are called) his coworkers into accepting him. 

Then there are the murders to be solved. I knew who the bad guy was from practically chapter one. It really wasn’t that hard to figure out. I could have dealt with that if the book didn’t let itself fall into the common trap of not giving the characters the information they needed to figure it out on their own, so eventually the baddie has to stop being the smart, careful villain he’d been up to that point and for no discernible reason start being sloppy and basically announce himself, his past sins and his dastardly plan to the main character. This isn’t uncommon in fiction, but it’s still a pretty weak way to solve a mystery.

I don’t want to make it seem like the book’s all bad. It isn’t. There is a lot of good humor in it. The sex isn’t horrible. There are some fun side characters, with enough hints at depths worth exploring to grab a readers attention. (I was especially interested in seeing more of Cael and Ash’s friendship.) There are also some great lines in it. Like this one:

This isn’t the HPF. You’re in our world now and it’s scary, and ugly, and fucked up. They won’t pat you on the head and tell you how special you are because you have a black daddy and a Therian brother who proudly waves his rainbow flags with you. Here, you’re a freak like the rest of us, so don’t tell me how to do my job.


I think my issue was just that everything was too over the top. Dex’s personality was too big, Sloane and his team’s grief too all-consuming, the antagonist’s instability too obvious to have gone unnoticed. It was all just too much of what could have been a good thing.

Change of Heart

Book Review of Change of Heart, by Mary Calmes

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Change of Heart

I keep hearing about Mary Calmes, so I sent out a call for lendable books. I was lucky enough to receive an ecopy of Change of Heart. (Thank you, A.)

Description from Goodreads:
As a young gay man—and a werepanther—all Jin Rayne yearns for is a normal life. Having fled his past, he wants nothing more than to start over, but Jin’s old life doesn’t want to let him go. When his travels bring him to a new city, he crosses paths with the leader of the local were-tribe. Logan Church is a shock and an enigma, and Jin fears that Logan is both the mate he fears and the love of his life. Jin doesn’t want to go back to the old ways, and mating would irrevocably tie him to them. 

But Jin is the mate Logan needs at his side to help him lead his tribe, and he won’t give Jin up so easily. It will take time and trust for Jin to discover the joy in belonging to Logan and how to love without restraint.

Review:  **spoiler alert**
This is the 2nd Calmes book I’ve read. So, admittedly, I don’t have a lot to judge by. Two is hardly enough to establish a trend, after all. However, I’m hoping that this was one of her earlier works, because it feels much more clumsy than Acrobat, the first of her books I got my hands on.

This book and I had issues from page one, with the whole ‘any woman out alone late at night should obviously expect to be raped (in this case gang raped)’ scene. It would be hard to get any more cliché than that.

I stuck with it, though, expecting it to get better. But I struggled. I was just so confused for so much of the beginning. Seriously, if you’re going to invent a whole new lexicon and then drop the reader in unprepared, the least you could do is include a glossary. I’m practically begging, here.

Then about the time I finally managed to figure out the foreign language of werepanter tribal hierarchies, I was struck practically dumb by the horrid implications of what a reah actually is. Really, ick.

The problem I have with the idea of a reah, or mate, as written here, is that there’s no reciprocity. It (thus, Jin) is equated to a possession, like the perfect dress. Anyone can claim it and own it. It/he has nothing of importance to contribute beyond existing for the sake of being possessed. There is no sense that, “I am your mate and you are mine.” It’s just “You are my mate.” Logan even makes Jin repeat it in an almost infinite variety of ways. “Who do you belong to?” Who owns you?” “Whose reah are you?”

I realise that this isn’t actually uncommon in PNR (m/m or het), but I don’t find it romantic in the least and it felt particularly heavy handed in this book. Here is an example passage:

“You belong to me, reah, and I will put my mark on you.”
He was right. I belonged to him…

I have two complaints here. The ‘belong to’—not belong with, but to—and the use of his title instead of his name. He’s a reah, a possession, not Jin a person. This carries through the whole book.

This is reinforced by the fact that Jin goes on and on to the Semels who turn out not to be his mate about how it’s the reah who recognises and chooses the mate, not the Semel. But when he meets Logan, it’s Logan who recognizes him as a mate before Jin does. (In fact, with a little prompting from Logan, Russ even knows before Jin does.) Because, of course, it must be the Semel/top/seme/MAN who retains the power in the relationship, especially over who is chosen and who chooses.

Then there’s the one sided marking thing. Logan has, just has to mark Jin over and over. But despite both being men, Jin never feels the need to mark Logan. And apparently semels are strong enough to live on if their reah dies, but reahs aren’t if their semel dies. I think you get my point. The whole dehumanisation/love your mate as a possession shtick rubbed me the wrong way. It just wasn’t sexy, which is kind of a cardinal sin of romantic, borderline erotic fiction.

On that note, it’s probably worth mentioning that I didn’t find the sex sexy either. There was no finesse to it. It was all pounding and throwing and slamming. It felt much more like Logan was trying to beat the snot out of Jin than make love to him. meh

On top of my basic dislike of the semel and reah relationship, I just found a lot of bits about the plot that threw me for a loop. For example, there is a large infodrop that felt unnatural. If Crane’s been Jin’s friend since they were kids and was willing to go into exile with him, I find it hard to believe he knows none of the semel/reah stuff Jin explains to him and the reader. In fact, wouldn’t ALL werecats know this stuff, since it’s about their leaders?

Or the time a werepanter was marking Jin’s home and no one noticed. What? I mean, I can understand not seeing paw prints in the snow, but isn’t the whole point of cats urine-marking things to be smelled? So how did Jin or Crane not get a whiff of that?

Or am I really supposed to believe that Logan, a good, smart alpha would A) not know the specifics of their own laws, B) agree to something he didn’t first ensure he understood? Or here’s another, if you had been kidnapped and woke up half naked and chained in an S&M chamber, then escaped the back room to find yourself in a dance club. Would you stop and dance with some random coworkers in that same club? Seriously? WTF? Keep going idiot.

Or how about this: given that reahs have ALWAYS been female and the male-centic “it’s the place of all men to protect women” (and by extension the place of women to be protected by men) stance of the shifter packs, the Law of Bast declaring the reah the semel’s protector makes no sense at all. To call it a convenient plot device is an understatement.

Then there was the time that two individuals challenged eachother to a duel, of sorts. All very formal, with lots of official rules and named laws relating to it, etc. So, I’m still lost about why noone was upset or why Logan wasn’t forced to forfeit the match when Jin very clearly broke the rules. (The rules Logan had already broken, if I’m being pedantic.)

One of the biggest issues for me though was that the author seemed to want to have her cake and eat it too. Jin is almost universally worshipped by every shifter he meets (really, it’s surreal). A reah is a blessing and everyone is just praying their semel finds his one DESTINED, UNDENIABLE mate (when only ~1/1000 actually do). But then he is also reviled, exiled and hated for being a man and both Jin and Logan’s family try to deny him and their union. Surely, it can’t go both ways.

There’s all this overlap between characters and opinions, so it all comes across as all flippy-floppy. One minute Calmes is going on about how awe inspiring meeting a reah is and how much stronger a semel and a tribe will be for finding one. Then next characters are swearing him off as an abomination again. Back and forwards. I imagine this was supposed to create a bit of tension as inherent prejudices are confronted, but it just felt really, really inconsistent instead.

So I was confused by a number of smallish things, no real big deal. But causing me to almost choke on all of the love and good intentions toward then end was just too much for me. I’m not a big hearts and flowers fan to start with. But when it’s done with super cheesy dialogue…seriously, I’m dying over here.

The whole ‘turn your enemy to your alley via mercy in defeat’ was A) gagworthy and B) unrealistic, considering how egotistical and evil Domin had been previously. Am I honestly supposed to believe he’d instantly give up his pride and birthright to become an honorable man and servant?

Oh god, then all the praise and begging started:

“You are a Blessing, reah!” (Again, reah, not Jin…It is a blessing, not he is a blessing.)

“You saved your mate…but then helped those that tried to kill him. You are a gift, reah!”

Stay, stay, stay. Like he’s the freakin’ Messiah or something. gag, gag, gag. Seriously, GAG! Plus, super cheesy…and it went on forever.

Then the Too Stupid to Live Sh*t started, wherein Jin ran away because Logan betrayed him by incapacitating him in order to protect him. Jin even managed to compare this well-intended “betrayal” to his family trying to beat him to death and abandoning him for dead. Um…really not the same thing and the kind of TSTL logic that only makes sense in novels. I was not pleased

So, I’ve ranted a bit. I wasn’t captivated by this novel. I think I could have been if things had been a bit different. I can definitely see the formula other readers have comments on about Calmes books (even only reading the two so far) but this one was a fail for me, largely based on personal preferences. Part of me says, ‘Let it go. You’re taking it all too seriously.’ But another part of me just plain doesn’t like what it doesn’t like.