Shadowing Mace by Cheyenne Meadows
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Just ugh. I wanted some hot BDSM shifter sex with a solid mystery and I’ve no clue what I got instead. Some rote, mindless story that had no characterization, nothing interesting in the mystery portion and some really wooden writing. I was bored with the characters almost immediately. They were antagonistic for reasons unknown and then halfway through they decide to have a lot of sex and suddenly be in love. I never got a feel for either character and they came across as stale, uninteresting, and manic. First they were grumbling at each other to extremes then in love to extremes. Neither pole hit the right note and both felt exaggerated beyond enjoyment.
Then the mystery is boring and stupid, which is not helped by the writing. The dialogue is stilted and awkward with a lot of repetitive phrases. The men are supposedly investigating deadly accidents happening within the pack but they alternate between being suspicious and utterly ignorant. An out of the blue rockslide makes them curious but they don’t really think it was anything other than an accident. Then why are they suspicious? There’s no real justification for their actions and thoughts and the story is completely without nuance or subtly. It’s very blunt, in your face and the story walks the reader through every emotion and action. I simply didn’t care about the characters, their quasi D/s sex which mostly was short, emotionless statements about positioning before the deep supposedly emotional love making.
Let’s just leave it at this didn’t work for me. I started skimming about a third of the way in to see if it got better so I don’t feel right writing a full review. I’m sure I missed several parts, I read the final few chapters and feel safe in saying it doesn’t get better sadly.
three am 