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3.42 AVERAGE
3.42 AVERAGE
This book lived up to the tacky cover. Thank god I got this thing for free. Hokey. Trite. Amateurish.
dnf at 50%
The flow was off. Too smooth, I think. Conveniently smooth, if that makes sense. I mean... one problem was solved and then another immediately reared it's head, without any lull. It was too much. It was weird how one semel confronted Jin in an alley, he barely shook him off and the other semel find him too. The guy was living there for 6 months, and no one noticed him before. And then all at once they just knew where to find him. Weird.
Also weird that after Jin goes to Logan, they practically abduct him from under his nose. And then he just escapes, so easily?
The bigger problem for me however that I didn't like the MC's.... well now that I think about it, I didn't like any of the characters. Logan is really possessive and overprotective. Sure he just found his mate, but he doesn't want to allow Jin to even leave his sight. No one's allowed to touch him, not even his best friend. He's borderline controlling and I didn't like it one bit.
Jin, the main character confused me. I don't have a grasp on his personality, coz he changed his mind all the time. I loved how adamant he was at the beginning "I don't need no mate". And I thought he would resist longer than he did. It's practically insta-love.
And one other thing I hated is that everyone was so polite, because they wanted to please Jin, the only reah in the whole wide world. Everyone wanted to be in his presence, wanted to touch him and just simply talk to him. He has this kind of aura I guess, or maybe something is pulling them to Jin. I dunno. This kind of effect he has on people reminded me of Kai Gracen (Black Dog Blues by Rhys Ford), though it was more subtle there. And it honestly grated on my nerves.
The only reason I got this far is because I couldn't decide what to read instead, so I just kept going. :/ This is my first book by Mary Calmes but I'm not gonna write her off just yet.
The flow was off. Too smooth, I think. Conveniently smooth, if that makes sense. I mean... one problem was solved and then another immediately reared it's head, without any lull. It was too much. It was weird how one semel confronted Jin in an alley, he barely shook him off and the other semel find him too. The guy was living there for 6 months, and no one noticed him before. And then all at once they just knew where to find him. Weird.
Also weird that after Jin goes to Logan, they practically abduct him from under his nose. And then he just escapes, so easily?
The bigger problem for me however that I didn't like the MC's.... well now that I think about it, I didn't like any of the characters. Logan is really possessive and overprotective. Sure he just found his mate, but he doesn't want to allow Jin to even leave his sight. No one's allowed to touch him, not even his best friend. He's borderline controlling and I didn't like it one bit.
Jin, the main character confused me. I don't have a grasp on his personality, coz he changed his mind all the time. I loved how adamant he was at the beginning "I don't need no mate". And I thought he would resist longer than he did. It's practically insta-love.
And one other thing I hated is that everyone was so polite, because they wanted to please Jin, the only reah in the whole wide world. Everyone wanted to be in his presence, wanted to touch him and just simply talk to him. He has this kind of aura I guess, or maybe something is pulling them to Jin. I dunno. This kind of effect he has on people reminded me of Kai Gracen (Black Dog Blues by Rhys Ford), though it was more subtle there. And it honestly grated on my nerves.
The only reason I got this far is because I couldn't decide what to read instead, so I just kept going. :/ This is my first book by Mary Calmes but I'm not gonna write her off just yet.
I got a bit more than halfway through before I had to stop reading this book.
The premise was fun and interesting. I really liked the idea of cat shifters and having to deal with shifter life and daily life. This story could have gone amazing places.
Instead it’s essentially a primer on bad a bad relationship. Jin didn’t want to be marked. He feared and hated it. He ran for years, moving to a new town before he could set down roots, yet at the very first hint of resistance from his friend he breaks all his vows and promises to himself, completely changes his personality, gets marked, and turns into a different person.
On top of that, he often tells Logan, “no”, in many forms. He is setting boundaries. And Logan pushes right past them because he believes he knows better just by virtue of being a leader of his tribe?
I don’t buy it. This is toxic relationship material. This is a poorly written book due to the characters not stay true to themselves. Pass it up
The premise was fun and interesting. I really liked the idea of cat shifters and having to deal with shifter life and daily life. This story could have gone amazing places.
Instead it’s essentially a primer on bad a bad relationship. Jin didn’t want to be marked. He feared and hated it. He ran for years, moving to a new town before he could set down roots, yet at the very first hint of resistance from his friend he breaks all his vows and promises to himself, completely changes his personality, gets marked, and turns into a different person.
On top of that, he often tells Logan, “no”, in many forms. He is setting boundaries. And Logan pushes right past them because he believes he knows better just by virtue of being a leader of his tribe?
I don’t buy it. This is toxic relationship material. This is a poorly written book due to the characters not stay true to themselves. Pass it up
Have you ever read a book where it feels like an author wrote an entire M/F romance and then control+F-ed to replace the pronouns and certain anatomical terms and turn it into an M/M romance, but only on a strictly surface level? Because now I have, and I can't say I recommend the experience.
DNFed page 143.
DNFed page 143.
I liked this book - a lot.
Normally insta-love will make me DNF a book faster than you can blink, but in this book it made sense, it worked. And truly, I think it was all thanks to the dynamic between Jin and Logan.
Logan, the Semel of his tribe, blindly accepted the soul-mating, was completely and utterly devoted to Jin from the second they met and boy were his words swoon-worthy. If I had a man talk to me like that... well, I don't think they quite exist like that in real life.
Jin a male (impossibly rare) reah, on the other hand, felt the intense connection of their instant soul-mating (my word for lack of a better term), but spent the book battling with the intense push and pull of it (until the end of course).
The writing was okay - some parts could have been better. But it was an overall really enjoyable book and definitely recommended read.
Cait’s Rating & Review System:
Basics
a. Main Characters (1-5 x2) - Logan = 5, Jin = 5
b. Side Characters (1-5) — 5
c. Plot (1-5) - 4
d. Writing * (1-5) - 3.5
e. Angst (None - Can’t Read Again) - Medium
f. HEA or HFN?HFN
g.Would I recommend? - Yes
Overall Basics Score - 22.5 /25
Sexy Time
g. Level of Smut ** (G-X-Rated) — XXX
h. Quality of Smut *** (A+ - E) - A
i. Did it Make Me Sweat ;) ? ****(1-5) — 4
Overall Sexy Time Score - 14/15
Cait’s Score for Change of Heart : 36.5 /40, 90%
IF YOU SEE THIS, PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR FEEDBACK ON MY NEW RATING AND REVIEW SYSTEM. IS THERE ANYTHING I SHOULD ADD, CHANGE OR REMOVE TO IMPROVE IT? PLEASE AND THANK YOU, LOVELY READERS.
**Level of Smut is referring to how to tame vs explicit it is, which is why I went with this rating system. THIS IS NOT A RATING ON HOW MUCH I LIKED THE SMUT. Kissing and/or making out does not count as smut. Also, when I say ‘sex scene’, if someone has an orgasm, I’m considering it a sex scene; no matter how they get there. G (Score of 1) - No smut PG (2) - 1 sex scene books PG- 13 (3) - 2 sex scene books
R (4)- Your standard 3 sex scene book. These generally aren’t as long of sex scenes or as descriptive.
X-Rated (5) - all the good stuff is in here, baby, and a hell of a lot of it. This would also mean that the story is extremely descriptive, as well.
*** Quality of Smut is referring to how well the smut is written, according to my tastes. I have certain words and kinks, etc, that I am not a fan of and will automatically drop it down if I see it. That may not be the same case for you. I’ll try to include my reasoning if there’s anything specific. (A+ = 5 - E = 1)
**** Did it Make Me Sweat ;) ? Tbh, did it turn me on? Did I want to read more and more sex scenes (The answer is almost always yes)? This is different from quality because of the simple fact that the smut doesn’t ALWAYS have to be A+ quality to make me sweat… or does it??? I guess we’ll see.
Normally insta-love will make me DNF a book faster than you can blink, but in this book it made sense, it worked. And truly, I think it was all thanks to the dynamic between Jin and Logan.
Logan, the Semel of his tribe, blindly accepted the soul-mating, was completely and utterly devoted to Jin from the second they met and boy were his words swoon-worthy. If I had a man talk to me like that... well, I don't think they quite exist like that in real life.
Jin a male (impossibly rare) reah, on the other hand, felt the intense connection of their instant soul-mating (my word for lack of a better term), but spent the book battling with the intense push and pull of it (until the end of course).
The writing was okay - some parts could have been better. But it was an overall really enjoyable book and definitely recommended read.
Cait’s Rating & Review System:
Basics
a. Main Characters (1-5 x2) - Logan = 5, Jin = 5
b. Side Characters (1-5) — 5
c. Plot (1-5) - 4
d. Writing * (1-5) - 3.5
e. Angst (None - Can’t Read Again) -
f. HEA or HFN?
g.Would I recommend? -
Overall Basics Score - 22.5 /25
Sexy Time
g. Level of Smut ** (G-X-Rated) — XXX
h. Quality of Smut *** (A+ - E) - A
i. Did it Make Me Sweat ;) ? ****(1-5) — 4
Overall Sexy Time Score - 14/15
Cait’s Score for Change of Heart : 36.5 /40, 90%
IF YOU SEE THIS, PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR FEEDBACK ON MY NEW RATING AND REVIEW SYSTEM. IS THERE ANYTHING I SHOULD ADD, CHANGE OR REMOVE TO IMPROVE IT? PLEASE AND THANK YOU, LOVELY READERS.
**Level of Smut is referring to how to tame vs explicit it is, which is why I went with this rating system. THIS IS NOT A RATING ON HOW MUCH I LIKED THE SMUT. Kissing and/or making out does not count as smut. Also, when I say ‘sex scene’, if someone has an orgasm, I’m considering it a sex scene; no matter how they get there. G (Score of 1) - No smut PG (2) - 1 sex scene books PG- 13 (3) - 2 sex scene books
R (4)- Your standard 3 sex scene book. These generally aren’t as long of sex scenes or as descriptive.
X-Rated (5) - all the good stuff is in here, baby, and a hell of a lot of it. This would also mean that the story is extremely descriptive, as well.
*** Quality of Smut is referring to how well the smut is written, according to my tastes. I have certain words and kinks, etc, that I am not a fan of and will automatically drop it down if I see it. That may not be the same case for you. I’ll try to include my reasoning if there’s anything specific. (A+ = 5 - E = 1)
**** Did it Make Me Sweat ;) ? Tbh, did it turn me on? Did I want to read more and more sex scenes (The answer is almost always yes)? This is different from quality because of the simple fact that the smut doesn’t ALWAYS have to be A+ quality to make me sweat… or does it??? I guess we’ll see.
I literally ate this book!!!
I got a lot of books to finish but it occurs to me to go find some good stories and I ended up reading this in hours!!
Gosh! Mary knew how to trap me...and now I'm reading the next one.
I got a lot of books to finish but it occurs to me to go find some good stories and I ended up reading this in hours!!
Gosh! Mary knew how to trap me...and now I'm reading the next one.
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Yay libraries!
This was published in 2009. It is surprisingly good for that much earlier in this author's career. If you've ever read her work, you'll recognize the archetypes she most frequently uses. I happen to like or not mind them. YMMV of course.
What impressed me about this story is that every plot escalation comes from the MC's trauma or the worldbuilding, or both. That's excellent. This is why I'll check out the next book.
Where it fails is threefold. The first is where many books with trauma fail, the repetition of denial/refusal supposedly because the MC hasn't worked through his trauma yet, but it could have been handled more gracefully at least half the times, or eliminated. The second is in repeated dialogue as if these people can't remember their last argument. That's an editing problem; writing is a lot slower than reading is, so it's easier to forget what you've done, or conflate different parts of your manuscript. But an editor ought to have caught it. And third, that last chapter cries out for a better edit of its clunky repetitious prose that at that point I read for the gist.
But I enjoyed it, and that's the point. Three solid stars for worldbuilding, the other two for the plot and pair despite the flaws.
This was published in 2009. It is surprisingly good for that much earlier in this author's career. If you've ever read her work, you'll recognize the archetypes she most frequently uses. I happen to like or not mind them. YMMV of course.
What impressed me about this story is that every plot escalation comes from the MC's trauma or the worldbuilding, or both. That's excellent. This is why I'll check out the next book.
Where it fails is threefold. The first is where many books with trauma fail, the repetition of denial/refusal supposedly because the MC hasn't worked through his trauma yet, but it could have been handled more gracefully at least half the times, or eliminated. The second is in repeated dialogue as if these people can't remember their last argument. That's an editing problem; writing is a lot slower than reading is, so it's easier to forget what you've done, or conflate different parts of your manuscript. But an editor ought to have caught it. And third, that last chapter cries out for a better edit of its clunky repetitious prose that at that point I read for the gist.
But I enjoyed it, and that's the point. Three solid stars for worldbuilding, the other two for the plot and pair despite the flaws.