![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I haven’t read all the books in this series, so that of Scott and Tristan was almost a new story to me, most of the supporting characters were known, but their dynamics not entirely clear and in a way, to me, this made for a better read, because nothing was “expected”. One trait of the author I found again in this novel is her satirical twist, a humor sense that says to the reader, come on, we are here to have fun, don’t take life too seriously. This series is made mostly of men (even if there are positive female characters here and there) and these guys want to have fun, they like to have sex, and to have a beer soon after, to watch sports while snuggling on the coach, to leave their dirty dishes on the kitchen sink until the morning after and maybe even later.ETM Scott and lawyer Tristan are no different, considering also that, before being a lawyer, Tristan was a navy SEALS. Add to that both of them are werewolves, mates and both with an Alpha streak to the booth and you have the perfect recipe for a snarling before kissing romance. Scott and Tristan cannot bear each other but at the same time the mate bond is so strong they are driven to each other. They don’t want to mate, but they cannot have sex with other men, not only since, when one of them is trying, the other is ready to ruin everything.
Everyone around them is suggesting to let the fate have its course, but they are both stubborn and it will not easy to accept the unavoidable.
Due to the fact that I’m reading the books letting time pass between each of them, I’m not sure which is my favorite until now, but I quite liked the light core of this one, plus I found it sometime even cute and tender, without depriving the men of their 100% manliness.
Amazon: Pleading the fifth
Amazon Kindle: Pleading the fifth
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (November 26, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1480146919
ISBN-13: 978-1480146914
Series: Assassin/Shifter
1) A Marked Man: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/18664
2) Alaska, with Love: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/18780
3) By the Light of the Moon
4) Half Moon Rising
5) Best Laid Plans
6) For the Love of Caden
7) The General’s Lover
8) Russian Prey: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/17379
9) An Ignited Passion: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/17777
10) Reflash
11) The Red Zone
12) Irish Wishes
13) Pleading the Fifth
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bott
This novel reminded me of a very nice movie, Undertow, with a tragic ending, and so I was reading it teetering on the edge of fear, wanting to like these characters but afraid of what would be of them. Lucky for me, this is a romance, and of course, although non-conventional and not even totally rounded, there was a some sort of happily ever after for them.
This is the first paranormal romance I read by this author, but it’s really not so different from the contemporary romance I was used to; Cardeno C. likes a lot the concept of together-forever, and often the characters are childhood friends who experiment together for the first time, from love to sex and everything else in between.
Miami Moon is at the same time original and old fashioned. It's old fashioned for the way it looks on the vampire's lair, a den of debauchery where pain is mixed with pleasure and where the kiss of a vampire is both deadly than arousing. It's original for how it plots this novella, starting from the full light of a sunny day in Miami's South Beach to end in the moon light of a cold Chicago's night. 
I'm a faithful reader of T.A. Chance from the beginning; long or short, with cowboys or sport stars, fantasy, historical or contemporary, a new story by T.A. Chase always climbs the first place in my reading list. They are always different but still there is always this mix of romance and naughty sex that make them so good. And in a way, I can say that T.A. Chase loves everyone of his characters. 
Rowan McBride has a series of stories about the "growing muscle" event: one or both main characters change their looks to suit the taste of their beloved.
I stopped reading het romance more or less in 2006, but Sherrilyn Kenyon and J.R. Ward were among the last authors I read in that genre, and I remember I liked them. I especially liked the paranormal genre (while oddly I now prefer the contemporary ones) probably for their alpha male hero, always so strong, always so protective, always so bound to being honorable and right. That is not how Qhuinn and Blay are, or at least not totally; they are not really Alpha males, they are more enoforcerers, and till now they gravitated on the edge of the series, favorites to many readers but never having their own story. On the forums there was speculation they were gays, but the author never really gave them the definitive push, not until the book before this one: from what I gathered (since I haven’t read that one), Blay finally came out, but not to be with Qhuinn, but instead with Qhuinn’s cousin, Saxton; and to make things even more complicated, Qhuinn decides to have a child with a female, even if he didn’t mate with her.
This is the second book centering on the same characters, Roan McKichan and Dylan, in a series that is at its fourth chapter, so yes, I paused before deciding to directly read this one skipping the others. Sincerely I don’t have the feeling I missed anything in the story, maybe I would have liked to read how Roan and Dylan met, I suppose that is in the previous book, but nevertheless the story plot in this one is complete.
This is the story of Emma and Mandy; if this sentence sounds strange, giving that Mandy is for most of the novel a second stage character we hear only through a phone, that was my feeling. I was really not liking much Emma at the beginning, since my idea was that she was not treating well Mandy; Emma and Mandy have a 15 years long relationship, and despite this, Emma is still hiding things to Mandy, something I relate to not trusting her, and who you can trust if not the person you love? i.e. Emma was not really in love with Mandy. I’m happy I was wrong, and what you will read, if you trust my words, is “also” the romance of Emma and Mandy.
When I open one of these paranormal romances, I’m well aware of what I have in my hands: an Alpha male/omega man story, one where the top man is “over the top” and the bottom boy is faking his submissive position well knowing that there, above the clouds, the brain is lightweighted, and the real mastermind of the relationship is the one below. It’s not easy to deal with such a story, you can well fall into parody, and making it totally “bleh”. I think Shannon West is good in pushing it almost to the edge, without tumbling beyond the abyss.
I’m not sure I completely understood this two “gay for you” approach of the plot, but for sure it was something I have never read before. When Marcus is turned into a vampire, he is straight and with a girlfriend he loves, he has never once desired men and he was completely satisfied with his love and sex life. But a newly made vampire is dangerous, and it’s custom to have them interact only with same-sex supernatural creatures, so that they can be as forceful as they want without causing damages. So Marcus had his first same-sex sexual experiences and truth be told, he didn’t mind it. Sure, Marcus still preferred women if he had to pick or at least that was true until Phillip.
If I had to be true, I didn’t like so much Eduardo the first time we met; a straight man who is “forced” to have sex with men since all women on earth are dead, he really is not treating them well, actually he is a real bastard and in the position of Lincoln I would have not given him the time of a day. But, first Lincoln didn’t see how Eduardo was before, and due to his resemblance with Eduardo’s dead wife, Lincoln receives a way better treatment than all the other men.
I liked this book very much since it made a paranormal romance almost “normal”; Bastian is a newly made vampire, but he is so new and unprepared to the event that he is almost trying to convince himself it didn’t happen. Sure, growing an allergy to sun and long fangs don’t help him. And the drinking blood issue neither. But Bastian is still hoping it will go away, especially now that he is falling in love with Riley, and he wants to enjoy this new love like any other college kid.
A quite “classical” paranormal romance, even if this is book 7 in a series, I decided to read this one since I was fascinated by the character of Dagus, an African-American blind man who is the mate of Brad, a polar bear shifter.
The second in the Fool’s Odyssey trilogy if for me the better for now; I liked the previous book, but if I remember well the romance was not as much developed as it’s in this one. Andreas and Xavi are now a couple, Xavi went under the transition that made him a vampire, but he has not yet learned the boundaries of this new situation, and of course, as soon as Andreas has to leave him for a few days, he got himself into trouble.
Blacque/Blue is a fantasy paranormal urban novel. It basically imagines that in our current time there is a small town in US, Acarda, where paranormal creatures are living together in a sheltered environment. And humans as well. I actually hadn’t understood if humans are aware they are living among paranormal creatures, unless they are not in a relationship with them, mostly since paranormal creatures are not behaving any different from humans. That is the main point of this novel and what I found the most interesting as well.
A nice paranormal novel with an “homemade pie” feeling, and this is a compliment. Often, shapeshifter stories about gay-shifters banned by their pack for something they cannot avoid tend to be highly dramatic and a little bit repetitive. Bailey Bradford prevented this issue infusing her story with a “comfortable” environment, two more or less average men (if you let aside the little detail one is a shapeshifter…) and obstacles to their love that can be solved with the power of love and good predisposition.
This is a novel that masterly mixes together adventure thriller, romance but above all comedy: it’s not often that, while reading about drugs dealer and dangerous situations you find yourself laughing for some of the gags Adrian comes out with. 
