Tag Archives: M/M

Fight or Flight

Book Review of Fight or Flight, by Noah Harris

I picked up a copy of Noah HarrisFight or Flight at Amazon when it was free. It was still free at the time of posting.

Description from Goodreads:
Bryant had always been a fighter. He had fought to keep his family together, and after his father’s death, he had fought to get custody over his little sister. He fought to keep them fed, and he fought to keep a roof over their heads. And he did so by picking up his father’s old profession: illegal werewolf fights. It was a dangerous profession, but he made good money. It didn’t leave much room for a social life or romance, but he liked it that way. Those were just distractions from what needed to be done. He was convinced he didn’t want a relationship.

That is, until Jake walked into his life: an inexperienced rookie with firm determination, an eagerness to learn, and a secret of his own: he’s actually an Omega. Against his better judgement, Bryant agrees to train him but soon finds himself fighting once again. Only this time, he’s fighting himself and his overwhelming attraction for Jake. He soon learns that some fights aren’t meant to be won.

Review:
Sooo, this might have made a good novella, but there really isn’t enough of it to fill 300+ pages. It’s repetitive and slow. Plus, the Amazon description states, “Set amidst a strongly constructed shifter world of werewolf fighting…” But the reality is that there basically isn’t ANY world-building at all. And what very little there is, like alpha’s going into rut and trying to rape any omega they scent, doesn’t really even make sense. Plus, there is very little werewolf action in this werewolf novel. 90% of it might as well be a contemporary m/m romance. The mechanical writing is fine (though heavy on the tell) and I liked the characters (though I thought Jake was stupid and selfish for continuing to knowingly endanger everyone). But the book was less than satisfying.

Review of Off the Beaten Path, by Cari Z.

I borrowed a copy of Cari Z.’s Off the Beaten Path through Hoopla.

Description from Goodreads:
When Ward Johannsen’s little girl Ava shifted into a werewolf, she was taken into custody by the feds and shipped off to the nearest pack, all ties between father and daughter severed. Ward burned every bridge he had discovering her location, and then almost froze to death in the Colorado mountains tracking her new pack down. And that’s just the beginning of his struggle.

Henry Dormer is an alpha werewolf and an elite black ops soldier who failed his last mission. He returns home, hoping for some time to recuperate and help settle the pack’s newest member, a little pup named Ava who can’t shift back to her human form. Instead he meets Ward, who refuses to leave his daughter without a fight. The two men are as different as night and day, but their respect for each other strikes a spark of mutual interest that quickly grows into a flame. They might find something special together—love, passion, and even a family—if they can survive trigger-happy pack guardians, violent werewolf politics, and meddling government agencies that are just as likely to get their alpha soldiers killed as bring them home safely.

Review:
This is a fairly basic M/M, shifter romance, much like we’ve all see before. Having said that, I also thought it was very sweet. I appreciated that it was a bit of a slow burn and I very much liked the way Henry found himself falling for Ward. I liked that Ward was sickly, but still perfectly capable. I did, however, think that the way everything was solved in the end was a little too easy and off-page to be satisfying.

In his majesty's service

Review of In His Majesty’s Service, by Elizabeth Silver & Jenny Urban

I received a copy of In His Majesty’s Service, by Elizabeth Silver & Jenny Urban through Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Everyone in the Drion Collective knows that finding your match—the one person in existence with the same soul mark as yours—is the best thing that could ever happen. But the last thing Lord Anders Hawthorne is thinking about when he boards a ship to Drion for the king’s funeral is finding his soul mate.

Captain Zachary O’Connell has the perfect life—his ship, the stars, and no emotional entanglements. When heat sparks between him and Lord Hawthorne, Zach gleefully dives into a no-strings arrangement. He doesn’t expect it to last beyond arrival at Drion, any more than he expects trouble along the way.

Trouble quickly finds them, however, and it soon becomes clear that Lord Hawthorne is not only not who he says he is, but also that he’s the target of a deadly plot. With danger all around them, Zach and Anders must work together to save the Collective. Meanwhile, Zach must come to grips with losing everything he always thought he wanted, to have the one thing he never dreamed he needed.

Review:
Sooooo, this was not very good. There was WAY too much sex, given the length and amount of plot. It seriously suffered from lack of subtlety or buildup. As an example, the first time the two men met was over a dinner at the captain’s table. The only conversation was about the steak, and it’s barely a conversation. There was no indication that these two men had any interest in each other. Then on the next page, they were jumping into bed and the pet names and ‘this is special’ starts. The whole book was like that. The authors don’t give anything time to develop, just lobbing stuff at the reader out of no where.

Mechanically, the writing is fine, except for some repetition. They seemed to do nothing but rub noses and fall into bed. But the book is just too long. Half of the petty squabbles could have been cut and we’d still understand they were struggling to get to know one another. As could half the sex scenes. They were fairly repetitive anyway, always doing the same things. I just didn’t enjoy it and have no interest in continuing the series.