Book 16: Dearly Departed by Chip Pons

This book was mentioned on a newsletter as being a great m/m romance, and that was enough for me to request it on Libby! And there's so much in it that I like, and even more that I WANT to like, but. 

It's a classic grumpy-sunshine romance, where the grumpy is a funeral home director who always wears black and the sunshine is a florist, oh and also the funeral home director is literally Hades made mortal and the sunshine one is essentially Persephone only without the dubcon and so forth (but still with the grief!). Things I liked: great gay best friends for Levi (our Persephone), frank inclusions of bottoming prep including douching, and discussions of PrEP, and poppers appearing at a club, and in general these aren't queer men who exist as solo beacons in a straight world, they exist in a queer community in this decade. Now, would there be a gay club full of grinding men hooking up on the dancefloor in suburban New Jersey? Not in my experience, but they live in a Hallmark small town that's like every '90s show that has an inexplicable club in town. Call it Twin Peaks, call it Buffy, that's all fine. 

Things I liked less, or more to the point needed more of: this is one of those books where the concept is great, and a lot of the details are fun, but the actual feeling of the romance and them getting together just doesn't land for me. Part of it is that even with everything I liked above, they keep almost getting together physically and then waiting, waiting, waiting. And I love a slow burn, but there's a certain level of 'yes yes, one of you is literally a god who's been cast out, but what's the actual conflict' to the book. By the time they did finally kiss and then fuck for the first time, I felt like the story was done, and in fact we were only halfway through. 

This book also suffered from the thing where not only is it abundantly clear to the reader what the major issue each of the main characters is dealing with, they're also too aware of it. Bring back characters who have no self-awareness!!! It makes it all so pat and boring. 

Anyway! I don't regret reading it, even if I spent more time analyzing what did and didn't work and less time being swept away. 

Grade: B  

Book 15: The Wolf at the Door by Charlie Adhara

This month I'm reading a lot of monster-type fantasy in honor of spooky season in between a bunch of nonfiction books I've been meaning to get to, and this is the first one I finished! It's...fine. One part werewolves are real and known and so there's a joint task force of sorts between human police and wolf law enforcement to investigate a string of murders that appear to be wolf-related up in Maine, and one part love story between the new partners who are leading a case together and don't get along! And listen, I've read a metric ton of The Sentinel fanfic, that's a setup that I'm really here for generally speaking. But because you know the genre is romance, you know they're getting together, and the pacing of all of the reveals feels way too slow and just off. It's okay to be a bit ahead of your pov character, but in this case the shoe drops so late for him that he feels much dumber than I think he's meant to be. Both the romance and the mystery at the heart of the story are fine, but this book took the long way to get there. 

Also, the lead character's names just felt wrong for him, I kept reading scenes with seventeen different cops in them and forgetting which one was our guy because the name was so incongruous for whatever reason. A minor complaint, but just one more way in which the book didn't fully hold me. There's a sequel, and I was hoping this would be a fun gay werewolf series for me to read, but unfortunately I think it's a one and done. 

Grade: C