C
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Theme: Fake Relationship, Friends with Benefits/No Strings Attached, Were/Shifters, Workplace
Archetype: Doctor/Nurse/Veterinarian
For context, you need to know that I’m a big paranormal fan, I enjoy fake relationships a great deal, and I love a steamy book. So this book should have been perfect for me and the first 60% absolutely was. Unfortunately, it hit the skids at about 70% and didn’t really get back on track properly after that.
Mackenzie is an ER doctor in Denver and she’s a shifter and an omega. The rumours are that this makes her extra sexual which she has always rather resented as though she’s reduced just to a sex act. She half-heartedly dates, but they’re all pretty terrible and her gran is desperate for grandbabies. Isn’t there always a meddling older family member? I wish authors could find another way to force people into relationships.
So she asks Noah, an interventional cardiologist at her hospital, to be her fake boyfriend. Turns out Noah is in a tricky spot. He’s been pretending to be a normal shifter, but he’s not. He’s an alpha and this hospital has discriminatory policies against alphas*. But if he’s mated, or so the nonsense legends go, then he’s more docile and not as much of an alpha-hole. So they agree to be fake mates for the hospital and a brand new couple to Mackenzie’s gran.
(*Side note: I really enjoyed the world in which these shifters lived. Alphas don’t lead packs anymore; they’re just a bit ‘more’ than the average shifter. They can take suppressants that stop their pheromones from being spread and keep their emotions/hormones in check. This is how Noah isn’t outed to the hospital until someone does something nefarious.)
The first 60% of the book is a delight as they explore their fake relationship. The sex is steamy and there are some new-to-me things that are explored: Mackenzie’s heat cycle and knotting during sex. Both of those things along with the general learning-of-each-other that goes on were tremendous fun to read. At this stage I was reading with great happiness and with the occasional giddy smile directed to my Kindle.
Up until the book deteriorated for me, I adored Mackenzie. She’s funny and smart and teases the ever-so-staid Noah until he turns pink. It’s adorable! Noah isn’t so much a grump as he is a really serious dude. He’s so locked down that he neglects the importance of human connection. He lightens up considerably under Mackenzie’s influence.
Not all the characters are so charming though. Parker is Mackenzie’s gay best friend (I thought we left this trope in the 2000s?) and he is an actual grump and never quite as supportive of Mackenzie as I would like. He does get one truly excellent line when Mackenzie first tells him about her fake mate situation: ‘Oh, so now you’ve got multifaceted deceptions going on? Whipping ourselves up a tomfoolery tiramisu, are we?’ Undoubtedly the funniest line in the book.
So what happened after 60% that killed my joy? That’s just it. Nothing happened.
In fact, things stopped happening. The plot, which had been jogging along at a good clip, stopped and was replaced with lots and lots of confused navel gazing. All the tension and various problems they were managing as shifters resolve somewhat, and then what conflict is left is not compelling. Mackenzie and Noah hadn’t been honest with each other about their very real, growing feelings. There were hints, but for the most part, instead of a frank conversation, we have each character separately pondering their options and choices, but not actually talking to each other about it. At this point, I stopped reading because the story was really going nowhere, but a couple hours later curiosity won and I picked it up again.
When things started up again, we went right into the bleak moment which was … fine, as bleak moments go. But for me, the book had lost crucial momentum in the build up to that emotional climax and so it wasn’t as powerful as it could have been. The denouement was okay too, but my goofy smiles of the first 60% were long gone by then.
If this book had maintained its giddy pace all the way through, it would have absolutely delighted me. As it is, it’s a distinctly meh situation that I’m left with. Would I recommend it? Probably not. The first just-over-half is really fun reading, but it falls apart so dramatically after that, I ended up very disappointed.
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I didn’t finish, but I read most of it before giving up. There were all the issues Lana raises, plus actually the one that bothered me the most. And look, this book was clearly meant to be lighthearted fun and if anyone can read it on this level, mileages vary, etc.
But.
The stereotypes in this world about Alphas and Omegas echo racist sexual stereotypes, except these appear to be real biologically based sexual differences. They study the special anatomy of specially huge alpha dicks in med school, kinda validity. It’s a mean old stereotype that she’s super sexual and the key to amazing sexy times, except she is. How dare the hospital board be wary of his status as an alpha, prone to fits of animalistic possessiveness and rage. Which. He is prone to. The characters are white, in fact it’s important to mention quite a few times her beautiful natural blondeness, and I absolutely don’t think this was any sort of intentional overt racism. It was still really squicky. I kept waiting for it to get redeemed, and while I just don’t see how it could be I really really wanted it.
But then the plot went from meandering to mia and my exhaustion won out over my curiosity.
Same rating, slightly different reasons (except for the gay bff, because yes, aren’t we past the gay sidekick in cishet romance yet?).
I was excited at the beginning because we have an alpha taking suppressants to stave off discrimination (which is a switch from the usual omega-on-suppressants scenario), but the worldbuilding/shifter lore swiftly degenerated into nothing but heats and knotting, which just came across as fetishistic to me. Then we hit the bleak moment, which was not fine for me. Noah came off as dimwitted an ineffectual when confronted by the moustache-twirling villain, PLUS
But Ferguson has some kind of spell on me, because even after being disappointed by the first two books I’ve read by her, I am still excitedly anticipating her next novel, an adversaries-with-benefits romance.
Soooo I’ve worked with several interventional cardiologists and they were definitely Alphaholes.. arrogant too. I don’t think I can read this book without having serious doubts about the hero!
Also: gay best friend/sidekick: whyyyyyy???
I had my eye on this one, because I’m looking for shifter stories where they are an accepted part of the world, rather than hiding/segregated and persecuted. But I’ll be passing on it. Thank you for the review.
Thank you, @Lara, @kkw, and @Deborah! This book sounded like so much fun, but it sounds like it doesn’t quite live up to expectations which is disappointing. Bummers!
Alright, potentially stupid question time… I just encountered knotting during sex in a book for the first time as well. It was in a fantasy book with a dragon shifter. I’ve been seeing “knot puns” in titles a lot lately, but I’ve been too nervous to google the term. (I’ve recently realized I might be on the asexual spectrum and feel nervous/discomfort about some forms of sex, and I’m not sure what Google will send me to.)
So question: is knotting a real-world thing or only a fantasy-novel-penis thing?
Thanks in advance. Going to hide now.
I’m still wishing someone would write shifter books that have anything to do with the actual cultural practices of real wolves. The only thing I’ve ever read similar to that is the Elizabeth Bear/Sarah Monette (= Katherine Addison) series, which I liked a lot but which is about psychic bonding rather than shifting (and is definitely not romance).
@kkw: I would love to know more about the racism of Alpha/Omega stereotypes! Is there a resource you’d recommend or should I just go straight to google?
@SlightlyEmbarassed: this is not at all a stupid question. Knotting is a thing for some animal species, dogs and wolves for example. Humans knotting is a fantasy-novel-penis thing.
And good call on not googling.
It’s absolutely fascinating watching certain tropes leak their way into mainstream romance; fanfiction has left me familiar with the whole heat suppressant thing, so I boggled just reading the review.
The book itself sounds messy as hell.
@Amanda – As I understand it, Alpha beta stuff is just junk science, long since discredited, by the guy that originated it even, as a complete misunderstanding of wolf behavior. So not real but qualified googling of the topic should be relatively safe, unlike knotting, which, @SlightlyEmbarrassed, I believe is an actual wolf/dog thing but not something I’d want to google. Better than swan sex, at least. Thanks for nothing, Zeus.
The way that alpha stuff ties in with racist stereotypes… I mean, idk that it always does because I don’t read much of it personally. In this case, well, just… read a passage and replace Alpha or Omega with Black.
If you want a book about the history of racist sexual stereotypes more generally, I am afraid I don’t know where to point you although I am sure there’s great scholarship out there. Maybe not though, since you’re one of my best sources for what’s going on in publishing! I don’t read much nonfiction. I have picked up most of my knowledge of how horrible people are about this shit just by reading old literature and pulp novels.
Reading on socials that this author was a Reylo AO3 writer rejected by parts of the fandom for racism. And cannibalised large parts of her fic for her previous book. Her words, so her choice, I guess. Just some additional context.
kkw is spot on, the original work that produced the idea of alphas and beta was done on a wolf pack put together by the researchers, which did not in any way reflect a natural wild pack, which are always based on the family unit. The guy that did the research is called David Mack and as kkw says has spent decades trying to get the true picture of wolf behaviour out there.
Oh and the knot thing, also called a lock, animals that can’t grasp often have some form of lock so they stay together long enough to perform the act. There are some very weird penis shapes out there, a rhinoceros’ penis when fully erect is 6′ long with a right angled bend at 3′ which has a “cauliflower” at 45 degrees angle to the rest of the penis!! Obviously rhionceros’s can’t grip each other, so the bend and the “cauliflower” hold the male in place until the deed is done. Yes I did do a biological degree, many, many years ago.
Thanks, kkw! I’ve definitely seen critiques of monster/shifter/vampire romances and the othering of these characters could be seen as a stand-in for Black and/or Indigenous communities. I’ve read shifter romances but am less familiar with the Alpha/Omega elements, so I wasn’t sure if there was more to learn there!