Review: shows solid promise
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2012
The first half of this book was a 5.  The last third was a 2, an unfortunate end to a great start.  Ms. Copeland writes extremely well, but she fell into clichés of the genre and erred significantly on police procedure and logical character behavior.I like guy characters who are not traditionally masculine, but nevertheless competent and smart, not damsels in distress, so credit to the author for that.  The dialogue between all characters was well done, particularly between one of our protags and his best friend, and between our two leads.  Likewise, the primary female supporting character was also a strong, fleshed-out individual, a pleasant change from much in this genre.  And there was a seamless flow to the writing that for me is the hallmark of a gifted writer.On the other hand, there were problems with the relationship between our protags.  Once again, the smaller more girly guy is of course the bottom in bed - it's not even discussed.  Because with gay men, one is the alpha and one is the woman, right?  We just mimic traditional hetero relationships from the 50's, yeah?  (This is even weirder, because our butch lead was previously involved with another butch guy.  How could that have possibly worked out in bed - who was the woman then?)  And the girly guy was of course also the more emotionally literate of the couple, intuiting perfectly and coaching his partner through some difficult stuff.  And their relationship could only be classified as insta-love, always a difficult sell.  The sex scenes were on the florid side including clichéd wording and some hyperbole - one of our protags actually blacked out after his O.  This was just after an incongruent scene where this guy impersonally used his partner during sex in a supposedly (but not) sexy way more suited to a porn vid.The supernatural element was handled inconsistently, raising the question that if this entity had so much power and awareness, why was there a mystery at all?  And as other reviewers have noted, the climactic scene has been done before.Yes, there were problems with the book, but I feel compelled to reiterate that the author is nonetheless a talented writer.  And instead of being turned off by this work, I am interested in reading something else she has written.  She's got the writing part down and made a really strong start here, and to my mind just needs to excise some well-worn plot and character notions.