Review: Feel-good story, but not the best writing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 10, 2010
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 6/10PROS:- There's a lot at the beginning of the story that I found intriguing: the avoidance early on of any direct references to "werewolves" or "mates," Nate's reactions toward various people touching him, and his muteness (see cons also). The little hints here and there pertaining to Nate's background and what he's running from are revealed slowly in a way that really piqued my curiosity.- Joe, typical werewolf that he is, is incredibly protective and possessive of Nate, and these are traits I respond to every time I read about them, especially if the recipient of the protectiveness has never been cherished before. I really liked the scene in which Joe takes the time and effort to educate Nate extensively on what werewolf mating entails. Nate has a decent idea of what he's getting himself into before Joe claims him, even if Joe does conveniently forget a few things.- There's a good deal of sex in the story (it's light on plot, but it makes up for that with sex scenes), and for once there's a story element that allowed me to believe that one character could really climax twice within the span of 5 minutes EVERY time.CONS:- The language throughout is simplistic. (There's one page that contains the word "quickly" in 5 different sentences: quickly pulled, quickly lifted, quickly had them undone, quickly humped, quickly licked his finger...and there are 2 "slowly"s in there, too.) In addition, the writing contains mistakes that make it seem pretty amateurish at times: isolated POV switches within scenes; needless repetition; a lot of focus on mundane descriptions; too many "he"s without identifying which character they refer to ("He caught up with him just as he reached his motorbike"); etc.- A lot of the transitions in the book seemed rushed and/or poorly developed to me. The revelation of the men's desire for each other, for example, occurs suddenly with almost no buildup in preceding scenes. And Nate's transition from silent to chatty is the same way. He's entirely mute for the first several chapters, and then when he does first speak, it's not like he starts with one- and two-word answers and then gradually works his way up. He just launches into full-blown conversation mode.- Nate is basically just a stereotypical romance heroine with male anatomy. He's timid and tiny (as in, Joe and Nate are eye-to-eye when Joe is kneeling) and is expected to stay home and cook and clean like the proverbial Little Woman. The author does include a few little indications that such treatment bothers Nate ("it still rankled a bit"), but the two men's roles within the relationship seemed extreme to me.Overall comments: I didn't find this story quite as melodramatic as other Stormy Glenn stories I've read (although this one does contain its fair share of epic misunderstandings--at one point, Joe does something that hurts Nate's feelings and Nate thinks of 10 possible reasons for Joe's reaction but never even considers the most obvious one). My main complaint with the book is that the writing is far from the best I've read: it's plagued by sloppy phrasing and poor (if any) editing throughout. Writing issues aside, though, this is still a fun, frothy little story.