Tag Archives: shifters

Alpha's Surprise Baby

Book Review of Alpha’s Surprise Baby, by Kellan Larkin

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Alpha's Surprise BabyI picked up a copy of Alpha’s Surprise Baby (by Kellan Larkin) from Amazon, when it was free. It was still free at the time of posting.

I’m currently reading all the books on my shelves that have Alpha in the title. I did all the Omegas a couple weeks ago and it didn’t feel complete, so I tagged this second phase onto the challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
His blonde hair, the colorful tattoos on his porcelain skin, and his sparkling amber eyes were all intoxicating, conspiring to create a man who I couldn’t get enough of.

Kade’s an Omega wolf who just happens to be a rock star. But when his second album is released to terrible reviews, he loses all his enthusiasm for going on tour. That changes when his newly hired bodyguard turns out to be his fated mate.

Alpha Xander is thrilled to have found the man he’s going to spend the rest of his life with. But he’s still healing from the pain caused by a cheating ex. When Kade gets pregnant, he has to step up and become the father his new baby needs.

Through a stressful tour, a heartrending kidnapping, and a thrilling rescue, Kade and Xander find that their love is tested beyond belief. Will the bond of the fated mates stay true?

Find out if they’ll find their happiness in this standalone novella with a HEA. No cheating, no cliffhangers. Inside, you’ll find a precious shifter baby and plenty of sugar and spice.

Review:
Wow, you guys, that was bad. I mean really, really bad. The mechanical writing is surprisingly good. There’s the occational editing error, but it’s much better than a lot of the indie books I’ve read. But man, it has the excitement, tension and grit of a fluffy, tutu wearing, 12-year-old ballerina. I found it almost impossible to stay invested in. If it had been longer I wouldn’t have been able to finish it. The writing is just incredibly flat. I mean like no excitement anywhere.

Here’s an example:

“Kade, you’re pregnant.”
“Damn. OK.”

And I didn’t even leave anything out. That’s it. Man finds out he’s accidentally pregnant and that’s it. That’s the response. Talk about a missed opportunity to build tension.

The whole book is like this. Found your fated mate? ‘Ok, I’ll get around to talking to him sometime next week, after I have some tacos and practice with the band a bit.’ Daughter gets kidnapped? ‘Oh well, might as well get on with life like normal the very next day.’ Rescued your daughter? ‘Oh, that’s nice. Want some grilled cheese?’ No buildup, no tension, no emotion. DULL!

And that sex scene! No foreplay at all. An anal passage that apparently self-lubricates somehow, a total shift in characters’ personalities during sex and a climax as thrilling as that pregnancy announcement was all a major let down.

There was no world-building at all, nothing to explain shifters, shifter society, shifters’ exposure or not, shifter biology (which in an Mpreg is kind of important), what makes an alpha and alpha and an omega an omega (despite inferring that these were somehow very different, with different expectations and abilities, and apparently they mate only alpha to omega and omega to alpha. What about all the other wolves? No idea.)

The characters were no more developed than the world. I have no idea what their ages were supposed to be, but they read like very juvenile young adults….that, you know, have really unexceptional sex. They had no history, no depth, no verve.

On a side note, this is very much the Omega’s Surprise Baby, not the Alpha’s. But whatever. All in all, this one is worth missing.

The Alpha Meets His Match

Book Review of The Alpha Meets His Match (Shifters, Inc. #1), by Georgette St. Clair

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The Alpha Meets His MatchI picked up a free copy of Georgette St. Clair‘s The Alpha Meets His Match on Amazon. I believe it is perma-free.

I’m reading it as part of my Alpha Review challenge. I’m reading all the books on my shelves that include the word Alpha. I did Omegas a few weeks ago and it seemed like the thing to do to follow it up with Alphas.

Description from Goodreads:
Coyote shifter Bobbi Jo Simpson, top investigator for the Enforcer’s Council, is finally closing in on the ultimate prize: The Chemist, who’s been poisoning shifters all across the country for years. She’s the best at what she does, so what could possibly go wrong? Try: just about everything. She’s forced to partner up with the most stubborn, infuriating werewolf private investigator on the planet, who also happens to be her fated mate. Throw in a wily human thief who won’t stop trying to help her, a surly lion shifter who may be the death of her, a computer genius who knows too much about her…if she survives this case, it’ll be a miracle.

Wolf shifter Jax Mackenzie has never been accused of being a nice guy – but being nice doesn’t get the job done. A wolf without a pack, he works the most dangerous assignments doled out by a private security company – and his latest case is a real killer. A fatal Rage virus is spreading among the members of an elite BDSM club, and Jax is determined to get to the bottom of the case.

To get what he wants, he’ll ruthlessly use his supernatural strength, his wealthy connections, and Bobbi, the beautiful coyote shifter who’s following him for reasons of her own. But the coyote is his fated mate – and possibly his mortal enemy. Now it’s not just Jax’s heart that’s at risk – it’s his life.

Review:
I’m gonna be a Ranty Ranty McRanty-pants on this one I’m afraid.

So, this book was a total, total, TOTAL fail for me. It just includes every weak woman cliché that drives me crazy—the good girl who wanders into the slums and almost gets gang raped (except that she’s rescued by the hero), the woman who is given free drugs until she’s so addicted she’ll crawl and beg and blow three men while being humiliated and beaten for her next fix, the strong, capable, independent heroine who secretly just wants to submit to the big strong man, the need to force a woman in a sexually compromising position that she secretly enjoys, sexual humiliation as character development, and of course, enough gang rapes to keep me disgusted well into next year.

Having finished it, I can confidently say that there is not a single woman in this book who isn’t a sexual victim of some sort. Not one. Every female non-main character is either a blithering sex slave, a prostitute throwing herself mindlessly at a man or a rape victim (often more than once of those at once). The two main characters have both been sexually abused. Forget the Bechdel test, this fails life and as sad as it is to say, I bet the author doesn’t even realize this is the shit she wrote. It’s just that much of a norm in America.

It’s like rape and abuse of women is some sort of authorial shorthand for ‘bad man’ or ‘bad area.’ Want the reader to know the neighborhood is not just dangerous, but really dangerous? Rape a random ‘good girl.’ Gang rape her, even better. Never males though, this gives a different message. Want to ensure your reader knows your villain is truly irredeemable? Have him rape women. Maybe make him a drug lord who can systematically gang rape whole harems of drug addled women. That’ll surely get the message across.  I DON’T WANT TO READ SHORTHAND! And what’s more, I do not want to read a parade of clichéd female misery and victimhood.

Literally, every time Vaughn’s perspective came up I gave very serious consideration to giving up on the book. Not just because he was such a vile character, but because his vileness was so poorly written. Sure, he did horrible things, but they were things purposefully designed to bluntly telegraph **I am an evil man,** rather than to develop any sort of believable evil character.

I’d see Vaughn and think, “Great, now I have to sit through another gang rape and more abuse lobbed at mindless, defenseless women. I get it, he’s bad. Can we move on now?” And you know what, I was right every freakin’ time. Scenes with Vaughn were universally abusive, derogatory, rape scenes. It shouldn’t be so freakin’ predictable.

At 37% into the book, I made myself a note of how unimpressed I was with this common use of women in books; how I didn’t expect to see a single female character that wasn’t a victim of some sort and that by the end the author would put the heroine in the hands of this rapist villain. If she just wanted to give the hero a chance to save her (because she wouldn’t save herself) he’d get there in time. If the author wanted to add the extra shine to his character, he wouldn’t get there until she’d been raped. Then he could be such a good man that he’s willing to love a sullied woman. PEOPLE, I SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO PREDICT THE EVENTS OF A BOOK SO WELL AT 37% THAT I EVEN KNOW THE SUBTEXT THE AUTHOR WANTS ME TO READ FROM THEM! At least the author took the first option. That was a relief.

On a less horrendously offensive note, I was annoyed when the mission required the characters pose as a couple in a BDSM club. Of course, with no conversation, she’s automatically the sub and he’s the dom; because obviously women are submissive and men are dominant. Riiiight. Wouldn’t want to include anything that isn’t trite and predictable. How many times have uncomfortable female characters had to dress in slinky clothing and go to sexy clubs with men as part of an investigation in books? How many times have they secretly enjoyed it? I swear I’ve read this EXACT scene a dozen times. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve written this exact same question into at least one other review. It really does get old and it’s not even a little titillating. I’m just bored by more of the same.

And that’s the thing about this book. Everything in it has been seen before. If the rapes had been scaled back I probably would have just been annoyed instead of disgusted. But to have to read over-used, under-developed, badly edited, bog standard, poor PNR tropes on top of rape wallpaper? No, just NO, in big, fat, bold capital letters.

Book Review of Wicked Good Witches, by Starla Silver

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Wicked Good WitchesHey-ho, choose a cover. I don’t know which is the new and which is the old, but neither of them fits the tone or content of the books, so, go with whichever you happen to like best.

I picked this bundle by Starla Silver up from Amazon while it was free in May of 2015. (I know, I sometimes hold on to books for ages before I get around to reading them.) I chose to read it today because I’ve set myself a challenge to read all the books on my To-Be-Read shelf that include the word Alpha and, of course, book two of this box set is titled Alpha Knows Best. And as other reviews mentioned that these books don’t stand alone, I’ve started from the beginning, with Demon Street Blues.

As an amusing aside, I asked my five-year-old to pick which of the Alpha books I would read first and this is the one she chose. Looking at the covers, I can kind of guess why.

Anyhow, series description: 
The Howard Witches, three siblings charged with protecting The Demon Isle… 

Charlie, the werewolf. 
Michael, the empathic death reader. 
Melinda, living under self-inflicted house arrest. Her gift: prophetic dreams of people about to die. 

Their mentor, the four-hundred year old Vampire, William Wakefield. Charming, ridiculously handsome, and walking a dangerous line between sinking into darkness and living in the light. In constant temptation to declare his love for the one woman that could be his undoing. 

The story begins with an unsolved murder. One that will change everything… 

Come stalk the streets of The Demon Isle… you’ll go up against witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, shapeshifters, ghosts, mermaids, faeries and a host of other devious supernatural creatures waiting to wreak havoc on The Demon Isle. Where fans of the paranormal come to vacation and immerse themselves in fantasy. Where magic comes to life, mysteries abound, and you might just find yourself laughing, crying, and most definitely, falling in love. 

Reviews

Demon Street Blues:
Things I found to be true about all three books I read: simplistic writing, stilted dialogue, names used too frequently to be natural, frequent drastic and disruptive shifts in POV (I don’t think the author actually payed any attention to POV consistency), schmaltziness, cheesy language used during sex scenes, and men tend toward action while girls primarily agonize over love/sex. Lastly, none of the books stand on their own. They are closer to long serial installments than books in a series.

I thought this was an OK read. Really that’s about it. As I noted above the writing seemed simplistic and stilted, but not that much more than many other books I’ve read.

Unfortunately, I found the main character, which I THINK was Melinda (and honestly, shouldn’t that be something I can be sure of) annoying. Her entire personality seems to be guilt, self-doubt and intrusive sexual thoughts.

I also thought her history inconsistent. She’s supposed to have been a recluse for four years, but she’s emotionally distraught because of a bad date and sexual experience. What recluse goes on dates? Where’d she even meet a guy to invite her out? She also acts like she doesn’t know anyone on the island because she’s been in the house for 4 years. But what about the previous 17 years she lived there? She doesn’t know anyone but the sheriff  from that time?

The book ended when what I thought of as a side character finally made a decision about a relationship. It felt very secondary to the plot and like a random place to end the book. It’s not a cliffhanger exactly, more like just a place to break one continuous story, which is what I sense this series is.

It’s not wholly without attractions. The idea of a magical island is an interesting one. The characters, though shallowly written, were engaging. There was some occasional humor. Maybe this is just a matter of taste. If you like schmaltzy books with a sort of (I think unintentional) innocence to them (like a virgin trying to talk dirty) this could be right up your alley.

Alpha KnowsBest:
To repeat, things I found to be true about all three books I read: simplistic writing, stilted dialogue, names used too frequently to be natural, frequent drastic and disruptive shifts in POV (I don’t think the author actually payed any attention to POV consistency), schmaltziness, cheesy language used during sex scenes, and men tend toward action while girls primarily agonize over love/sex. Lastly, none of the books stand on their own. They are closer to long serial installments than books in a series.

My opinion of Melinda did not improve in this book. She just keeps getting weaker and weaker in my mind. She’s had a mental breakdown, been a recluse for four years, trips and falls repeatedly (caught by man, of course), can’t decide on her love, lets one man’s mild possible criticism and poor sex destroy her sense of self-esteem and can’t have sex without felling ashamed and guilty. She’s just broken in a way her brothers aren’t, despite similar circumstances. She is a cliched romance heroine.

Here, in this book, we got much more of a sex scene than the last one and the use of descriptors like, “lusty flesh”(hers) and “lusty throb” (his) to describe genitalia just cheesed me out. Plus the lack of condoms was distracting. I’m not usually someone who insists on condom usage. Fantasy is fantasy, but here I kept getting distracted by, “Doesn’t anyone worry about getting pregnant?”

Plus, we have the establishment of a love triangle. Why? Isn’t it bad enough that the female character is too wrapped up in her own head and thoughts of sex to be concerned with the safety of her brother? Do we have to make her incapable of deciding on a man too? Do we have to add the unnecessary angst of a triangle too?

Then there are the brothers. One is extraneous to the plot, never really doing much of anything and the other seems to be an idiot. The villain is so obvious it felt like the characters had to be being purposefully obtuse not to see it.

Like in the first book though, it manages to skirt by without ever falling into truly bad territory, annoying and trite, but not all out bad. I think there are those who like this sort of writing and story-line and I did really appreciate that Charlie was into full-figured women and it wasn’t made out to be anything special.

Bye Bye Bloodsucker
Things I found to be true about all three books I read: simplistic writing, stilted dialogue, names used too frequently to be natural, frequent drastic and disruptive shifts in POV (I don’t think the author actually payed any attention to POV consistency), schmaltziness, cheesy language used during sex scenes, and men tend toward action while girls primarily agonize over love/sex. Lastly, none of the books stand on their own. They are closer to long serial installments than books in a series.

I’ve said in the review of each book in this series I read that the language around sex was cheesy. I never knew so very many things could be described as lusty—‘lusty breaths,”lust steps,’ ‘flesh,’ ‘throb,’ ‘fire,’ ‘pants,’ ‘shiver,’ ‘sting.’ I could go on. It’s used a lot. But Bye Bye Bloodsucker also included what I’m convinced is the worst line (in a long line of lines involving too many occurrences of peaches, peaks and fuzzy) I’ve ever read in a sex scene.

He groaned, the limp worm swimming in her hot peach, tickling her insides with sudden girth.

On man, that is SO bad. Not just because it’s CHEESY, like disturbingly so, but also because when read in context, I’m pretty sure the POV shifts within that one sentence.  Most the scenes seemed to be of the same sort of tone. I read it to my husband and he just stared at me until the moment stretched so long and we both burst out laughing.

While with the previous two books I was kind of so-so, but never really put off, this one never made the grade for me. I was just reading it to have finished the box set. It even ended on a twist you can see coming from the first chapter. It stayed with the women are klutzy, trouble magnets with little intelligence theme (the mermaids were the worst). There was too much happening and not enough tension allowed to build, such that I never really cared and again, the book ended with most the threads still open. We were just basically given the same happy ending as we’d been given at the conclusion of book one.

Edit: Ha, I have to laugh. I couldn’t decide which cover to use for these books when I posted this review. I happened to be scrolling through my review page on Amazon, just now, and noted they have new covers AGAIN. So, I did a quick Google search. Is this a new things, changing up covers frequently to catch peoples eye or something? I bet I’d find more if I really went searching. 

Authors, obviously this is just my opinion, but as a reader who recognizes book mostly by the cover, this constant change up is really annoying. It means, if it’s eye-catching, which I understand you want it to be. But I end up checking it out over and over, only to discover it’s something I already have/read. And you know what that is? As I said, really, REALLY annoying and a waste of my time. It means I’m likely to avoid putting myself in the same position in the future, by not bothering with your books in the first place. That’s just me, but it’s something to think about. 

Edit #2: Look, they all have new covers AGAIN. I just happened across it, this morning. I wonder how many I’ve missed. 

Edit #3: Look, they have a whole new set of covers again, again, again, again…