Review by haloblues - Exhale

haloblues 's review for:

Exhale by Joel Abernathy

4.0

I can't begin to tell you how pleasantly surprising it was to discover this was a book with a major transgender character who was treated with sensitivity and care. At the time of reading, I didn't know whether Joel Abernathy was transgender himself, so Ellie's introduction at first had me a little wary (cisgender authors attempting to write transgender characters often drop the 'reveal' in that clumsy way that requires revealing their deadname and misgendering them), but in this initial case I'd consider it justified as the deadnaming was coming from an intolerant side character and Jack immediately argued with him about it, serving as a way to both make clear that Ellie is transgender and to showcase Jack's protectiveness, acceptance, and love for her. She was deadnamed various more times throughout the book, which was more bothersome, but the characters doing so were never treated as right or sympathetic in doing so, and were consistently corrected. (I will admit, though, the entire time she was with the Majerus pack, I was stressing over whether or not she was still being given her puberty blockers and the consequences of it if she wasn't.)

I knew as soon as Leonie first gave the explanation of omegas that Jack would somehow turn out to be one, and that Nicolae would bite him at some point, but man did I not care about being able to predict it. It just made me all the more eager for it to happen, waiting for how and why and when. I loved the ending, too - that's exactly what I always hope to happen in my paranormal books.

Andrei was adorable, too, as was his relationship with Jack, and I loved the little glimpses of Ellie/Leonie.

Details: Fixed POV (Jack's), first-person, past tense
Favourite character: Both
Happy ending?: Yes

Favourite quotes:

She rolled her eyes. How did teenagers keep the damn things in their heads when they were always doing intracranial gymnastics?

By the time I carried in the last of our must-haves, Ellie was gone. I found her in the second bedroom checking out the closet space. She turned and looked up at me behind a curtain of hair. “I guess this place is decent.”

I clutched my shirt over my heart like I was going into cardiac arrest and gasped, holding onto the doorframe for support. “Those words, they’re… almost positive, but… teenager. Does not compute…dad brain shutting down.”

I stared in confusion until the doors slid closed before turning to Nicolae and asking, “What the hell was that about?”

“That was Andrei,” he answered, sitting at the counter. He poured a cup of coffee and slid it over to me. “That’s what we call him, at least. He’s a pup my men rescued on a recent mission.”

“Rescued? From where, a zoo?” I asked, sitting across from him.

I was pretty sure Nicolae Ursache had never asked for a damn thing in his life. He probably came out of the womb, cut his own umbilical cord and said, “Milk, bitch.”

I made it to the bathroom and was relieved that no one followed me in. Taking a piss in front of a dog was one thing, but I drew the line at one who could write in cursive.

Nicolae narrowed his eyes. “First, you bitch about our ‘savage traditions,’ and now that you’re actually at risk, you’re giving me a hard time about sitting out?”

“I have to bitch. I’m southern, it’s what we do,” I shot back.

“She’s been gone for a month, not ten years,” Nicolae remarked as I placed a bowl of Skittles on the counter with all the red ones picked out. Ellie had reactions to the dye, and she’d been a hyperactive gremlin for a whole summer as a child before we figured out. The Skittles were just the last offering in the buffet of all her favorites, ranging from baby carrots to spicy cheese puffs.

“You’re talking to the guy who joined the scouts as a troop leader because the idea of sending his kid away on weekend trips gave him hives.”

“Sounds like a perfectly healthy level of attachment.”

“Hey, your kid turns into an eight-hundred pound gorilla with a dog head and he probably learned how to fire a gun before he learned how to ride a bike.”

“That’s beside the point, and one day, Ellie is also going to turn into a wolf,” he reminded me.

I grimaced.

“That’s not very open-minded of you, Jack,” he taunted, reaching into the bowl of candy.

I swatted his hand with the spatula I was planning on using to take the cookies off the baking sheet once they cooled.

A small brown dog was sitting on one of the couches, gnawing on a throw pillow. There was no shortage of street dogs in Bucharest, but it was the first time I’d seen one inside. It was markedly wolflike, all legs and ears and teeth.

“You guys get a pet?”

“That’s Andrei,” Mason answered. The pup’s ears perked up at the sound of his name. He dove off the couch to run over to Mason, pawing at the young Alpha’s pant leg. “He prefers this form.”

“I think I do, too,” I muttered. “He’s not as terrifying.”

The pup yapped at me and I bent down to pick him up. He squirmed and snarled like he wanted to rip my face off, but he gave up in record time when he realized I wasn’t going to let him down. “Does he just run around loose all day?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

I frowned, holding Andrei to my chest at the risk of getting bitten. He was making the sounds of a possessed hamster in its death throes now that he realized he was trapped.

“He should be in school,” I said.

“We tried that. He bit the teacher and ate everyone’s homework. He’s fine like this.”

Content Warnings