Review: The whole thing is over-the-top
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 3, 2012
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 5/10PROS:- I love the idea of a canine shifter and a feline shifter being mates.- It's sweet how careful and considerate Marcus is with his small partner.- Marcus's family is loud and boisterous and fun. And their immediate acceptance of Adam, especially since he's a) male and b) a feline shifter, made me like them even more. I also liked the idea that Marcus's family could smell the "mate bond" on Adam before Marcus and Adam had even met.CONS:- The story is one of the most melodramatic I've read in this genre. The two main men are basically caricatures of the Strong Hero and the Dude in Distress, and their reactions to simple external stimuli are incredibly out of proportion the majority of the time.- Everything happens very quickly. (One example of this is the way the two men jump immediately into bed together even though Adam has never been with anyone before. That first time together simply lacked something for me: they move too quickly, they haven't known each other long enough, they don't make a big enough deal out of it being Adam's first time, etc.) True, the story covers a period of only a couple of days, but a number of life-altering events occur in that amount of time, and we don't see any deep mental/emotional processing of any of them.Overall comments: If you're not a fan of melodrama, definitely avoid this one. I thought it was amusing but ultimately unsatisfying: there's nothing special about the caliber of the writing, and I rolled my eyes more times than I wanted to count.