Unleashing Angel by Mel Spenser

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is probably the most “ordinary” gay paranormal romance I have ever read; when you deal with werewolves and full moon and mating rituals, well you are expecting for the story to be a bit unrealistic, for sure not to be almost a pictorial journal of your modern gay man.

At the beginning of the story Brian is just dumping is cheating boyfriend. Brian is a bit of an oddity among his friends, all party boys always searching for the last flavour of the month; Brian wants a long-term relationship, a steady boyfriend, commitment and exclusivity included. So when he is offered a 5 weeks job in rural Arizona, he takes it as a chance to break up with Sam, the cheating current boyfriend, and clean the field for when he will come back home to West Hollywood, Los Angeles, maybe then it will be the good time to find his Mr Right.

Brian is not expecting to find it in Arizona; Angel is up to his name: young, pretty and petite, he has also a clever mind to top a fine little body. Unruly dark curls and sexy tattoo in enticing places, Angel is Brian’s wet dream comes true. At the beginning the slightly younger man (29 against 22) seems not interested in Brian, but then it comes out that Angel is simply not experienced in the love games: he is still a virgin, to men or women alike. Apparently, even if now Angel is studying at Caltech, near Los Angeles, having spent all his life in a small town where he was the only gay guys deprived him of a lot of chances. Then maybe the little detail that Angel is a werewolf and he will undergo his first shift once he will have sex, well maybe dumped his mood to try it with the first one passing near him.

While I clearly understand what Brian finds in Angel, and why he is interested in the guy, I think Angel was more interested in having the experience and less with whom, at least at the beginning. I had the impression that: a) Angel was at home, same small town with no gay men in the neighbourhood b) Angel had really nothing to do for all the summer c) Brian was there and willing.

There is indeed a bit of rush from Brian’s side, wanting to touch home as soon as possible, and almost trying to bind Angel in a relationship without even the guy knowing it. Even if not so young in age, Angel is indeed young at being in a relationship, and he would be probably happy to have boyfriends like relationship more than committed partners. Until they are alone in the woods, there is really no difference between them and what they want and it’s interesting to see them amidst the gay community of WeHo: Angel is a fish out of water, and suddenly the age gap between Brian and him is wider, probably even more than what is actually. The little interlude in the WeHo community is nice, and it gave you the idea of how an apparently good relationship, with all the premises to work, can be easily destroyed if partners don’t talk.

In all of this you are probably wondering how Angel being a werewolf influenced the event… that is what I said at the beginning, it didn’t. Actually the whole werewolf thing is only accessory to the story, and it’s really downplayed; Angel could have been a werewolf or anything other that made him a little out of ordinary, and it would have been the same. Even the whole “virgin” waiting to be “unleashed” with sex thing was only a nice accessory, and nothing really out of the world happened when Brian finally debauches the “angel”.

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