by Penny Angeles-Tan | Jul 17, 2023 | Book Reviews
I came across You Are Mine, Omega by AlisTae on Goodnovel and decided to give it a chance because I was curious about what was so special with this omega that an alpha or two would be desperate to claim her. In most stories, omegas are treated with disdain or indifference.
Allison is the Beta’s daughter, but instead of having Beta blood, she is (apparently) an omega. She likes to keep things low-key so no one in school knows who she is except for the alpha’s son, Ethan, who she has had a crush on for a long time. Because of this, she gets bullied, but she ignores it.
On her 18th birthday, she discovers that Ethan is her mate, but he rejects her. In the meantime, Ryan, Ethan’s brother, is constantly in the picture and seemingly into her without saying anything.
But at the same time, he also alternately pays her attention and then ignores her completely. I swear it is causing whiplash.
Because the rejection almost killed Allison, she is unsure about how she feels for Ethan. However, she is also confused about how her body reacts when Ryan is near. Does anyone else think that Ryan is her second-chance mate?
The story has potential but needs a lot of editing, not just grammatically but also for consistency. The author tends to be repetitive, perhaps to emphasize a point. Instead, it appears that the author didn’t proofread before posting.
That I think is unfair to the readers who are paying per chapter, especially when we consider that most of these authors who post on reading apps are keeping track of their word count, and I’ve noticed that quite a few would write the bare minimum to publish a chapter as scheduled.
That being said, The story is engaging enough for me to say, “Go ahead and give it a gander,” but with a warning label that says, “Proceed with caution. It may inflame you, lol!”
It is still an ongoing story, a quick read, and not too much drama. You may enjoy it. You can find You Are Mine, Omega by AlisTae on Goodnovel.
by Penny Angeles-Tan | Jul 14, 2023 | Book Reviews
The Arena by Cooper was a change of pace for me. For the longest time, I have been reading shifter stories with werewolves and lycans as the main characters. The Arena brings into play many different types of shifters such as lions, a Bengal tiger, a polar bear, and kestrels. The main characters, however, are Cedric (the last Lycan) and Tana (the last Elemental Fire Dragon).
The last of their kind
For many years, humans have hunted and killed supernaturals (or supes) out of fear. But something changed recently. For the past year )at least), supes have been hunted and captured. Why? For entertainment! They were imprisoned, starved, and then forced to fight to the death against other supes gladiator-style in the Arena. This is while being in their human form and unable to shift.
In the world, only 4 dragons remain, one for each element – earth, air, water, and fire. Tana is the last fire dragon. Her family chose to kill themselves rather than be captured by humans.
His pack was attacked on the day of Cedric’s ascension to Alpha of Alphas. His parents were killed while he and many of his pack members were captured and sent to the arena.
The Arena is where Tana and Cedric meet. They have been fighting in the Arena for about a year … which proves that they are very good fighters as they have not lost once. The hunters think Cedric is an Alpha werewolf. Cedric thinks Tana is an Alpha werewolf as well, and she has not taken the time to enlighten him otherwise. Cedric also thinks that Tana might be his mate but can’t be sure because of the suppressants the hunters have been given them to prevent them from shifting.
Mate!
I thought that seeing how the mate bond manifests for different kinds of shifters is interesting and it made sense that it wasn’t quite the same thing for dragons. A major difference is that simply biting or getting bitten is not enough. Dragons need to be claimed.
When Cedric and Tana finally get together and he bites her, he finally realizes that she isn’t an Alpha werewolf but something else altogether that is probably even more powerful. In his confusion he leaves her, presumably to work things out in his head. Unfortunately, Tana took this as a rejection and left with a broken heart.
This becomes the turning point for everything that happens in the rest of the story.
The Review
I have what I like to call a “cinematic brain”. It means that when I read I can picture what is happening in my head and, often, the words actually disappear and I am reading the book as if I were watching a movie. This translates to if the movie in my head is bad or subpar I figuratively walk out of the theater.
Cooper describes scenes in The Arena so vividly I find myself living in the story. I would put her in the same league as Chris Columbus and Peter Jackson if she were a film director. Yes, that is how gorgeous the scenes play in my head. While prone to not using the Oxford comma (hyuk!), Cooper skillfully manages to keep me so engaged that I find myself savoring all the pages, rather than flying through the book as I usually do. I spent more time reading, not because it was a struggle, but because I would rewind to see a scene more clearly.
I would classify The Arena by Cooper as a fantasy/adventure/romance and at that, I would say it is more fantasy than romance. Yes, steamy scenes can get pretty steamy, but possibly 90% of the story has nothing to do with sex … which I thought was masterful! This opens up the audience of this book to more than just thirsty women.
If a fantasy story with dragons, lycans, werewolves, etc. is something you are interested in, you may want to check out The Arena by Cooper on the Goodnovel app. This is a story I highly recommend and eagerly await on Amazon.
by Penny Angeles-Tan | Jun 30, 2023 | Book Reviews
Lately, Alpha’s Hidden Obsession by Misha K keeps getting recommended to me when I open iReader so I thought, “Sure, let’s give it a try”. From the title, I knew it had to do with shifters, werewolves specifically, and that there was an obsessed alpha in it.
The main character in this story is Poppy who has been tortured for years by her Alpha grandfather because she was wolfless. She scented her mate and when she followed the scent it led her to Nash, an Alpha heir for another pack. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of a sexual encounter with Cynthia at the time and he decides to reject her in favor of Cynthia, his chosen mate.
Poppy is then sent to Umbra Academy where she fears she will be killed as it has the reputation of being a tough/savage school where few survive. There she meets Damon, the biggest baddest Alpha in the school.
Damon is betrothed to Monica and yet for some inexplicable reason, he finds himself drawn to Poppy. It takes him a while but he realizes that she is his mate and he does everything he can to resist.
Interestingly, while Poppy felt the mate bond with Nash, she could not even sense it with Damon. Why? She is, however, extremely attracted to him but fighting it herself. As far as she was concerned, Damon was bad news.
Story development and character development are good. It’s not a sex romp or bogged down with so many minutiae. However, the book does need editing as there are too many times when the wrong word (homonym) is used or an incorrect turn of phrase/idiomatic expression was written in.
The most glaring example is when the author says that Poppy is “in heats” or “her heats”. I thought it was a typo at first but since she is consistent in using that term it tells me that the author thinks that “in heats” is the correct term.
It isn’t. A she-wolf goes into HEAT (singular) or she is IN HEAT.
That being said, I am 37% into the story and it is going well. I am loving how possessive Damon is being and how he actually came out and told her how he feels for her. Now that Nash is back in the picture, I am interested to find out how it will play out. It’s good enough that I am buying coins just so I can read the whole book.
I think Alpha’s Hidden Obsession by Misha K is good enough to publish … just get a copy editor first to clean it up. You can find this jewel of a story on the iReader app.
by Penny Angeles-Tan | Jun 11, 2023 | Book Reviews
I am so glad I discovered Rejected Mate by Sam Crescent. I have read many rejection stories but this one stands out. It is not about a rejected she-wolf being stronger than she thought she was. It isn’t about a bully who rejects a she-wolf changing his mind and deciding to accept her again. It isn’t about finding a second-chance mate.
This story was so well-written that I was captivated from page 1! It takes popular tropes (shifter romance, rejection, and age gap) and puts a unique spin on them. I hesitate to even call this a bully romance as the bullying part is incidental to the story.
Constance is a late bloomer. Where everyone else she knows shifted at 18, she didn’t shift until she turned 21. Tanner is the Alpha’s son. He has been bullying Constance for many years, calling her fat, ugly, and disgusting. Constance and Tanner realized they were mates on the day of her shift. Oh, horror of horrors! Constance hates his guts!
At this point in other books it would go one of two ways … Tanner would realize how he has been stupid all these years and would do his damnedest to win her or outright reject her. In this book, he chose the latter … Tanner rejected Constance and he did it publicly. Since he is the Alpha’s son, the pack took his rejection as a sign that they should all reject her, so they did. Her parents threw her out, she lost her job, and the rest of the pack turned their backs on her.
Rejection is painful, as we know from shifter lore, but this is the first time that I know of where the effects of the rejection go beyond chest or belly pains or pains caused by infidelity. Instead, the rejection is described as feeling very cold from the inside. Being rejected by one’s mate is bad, but imagine being rejected by the entire pack.
The entire pack, except for one … Gage, the Alpha, and Tanner’s father. In an emergency pack meeting, he announces that according to scripture, when a wolf is rejected, a relative of the one who did the rejecting can step up and accept the rejected wolf in their place. And that is what Gage did.
What a twist! Is it just custom or does Gage really want her for himself as a mate? Will Tanner change his mind and decide to take her back? Will Constance fall in love with Gage and decide to take him as her mate?
If you’ve never read any of the books from Sam Crescent’s Alpha Shifter Collection, this is a good book to start with. It isn’t in Kindle Unlimited but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. You can get Rejected Mate by Sam Crescent on Amazon for $3.99. All the books in the Alpha Shifter Collection are $3.99 a piece.
by Penny Angeles-Tan | Jun 6, 2023 | Book Reviews
I discovered Bullied Mate of the Lycan Kings by Deenma on Dreame while looking for something new to read. I didn’t see the preview blurb on the app, just the first chapter, and it was an intriguing start.
Everyone in school hated Lily, a wolfless Omega, because of her father, who was executed for being a traitor. Despite that, she has always been a good student and mostly kept her head down and tried her best to ignore everyone’s bullying. One day she just reached her breaking point and tried to take her own life by slashing her wrists. She would have become successful, too, if not for Cade.
Cade became her only friend and later her boyfriend. When asked why he saved her he told her that they are mates. But things are not as they seem as it turns out, he was playing a long game and plotted with his friends to pull the ultimate prank on her which ended with a rejection.
In despair, she pulls out of school and decides on homeschooling. A couple of years later she enters Shadow Cove Academy, an elite school in hopes of graduating with flying colors so that she could enter an ivy league school after and improve her and her mom’s lives. It is there that she meets the three most powerful Lycan Alphas … Aiden, Ren, and Zac.
On her first day, she accidentally bumps into Aiden … that was all he needed to green-light the bullying from everyone on campus. She also meets Ren who becomes her guardian angel. Then there’s Zac who has a deep dark secret only a few people are aware of. She finds herself strongly attracted to Ren but unfortunately, he has a mate, Mauve. As the book progresses her only friends are Ren, Rhea, and Chelsea.
The title and the blurb imply that this is a reverse harem. It also shows 4 males. However, 68 chapters in and there are no signs that the story is going anywhere in that direction. Also, if I had read the blurb first (which I only saw a few minutes ago when I visited Dreame from the computer) I probably would not have opened this so soon as it is way too graphic for me for a blurb. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for steamy scenes per se, but I think the build-up to those scenes matters.
That aside, many parts of the story are quite compelling. I confess I found chapters 65 to 68 difficult to read because I don’t like seeing Ren suffering or in pain. I only wish that the story moved a little faster so that we could see how Aiden, Ren, Zac, and I assume Cade, find themselves mated to Lily which will lead to the contents of the blurb.
If you think this is something you might want to sink your teeth into you can check out Bullied Mate of the Lycan Kings by Deenma on the Dreame app.
For many years, humans have hunted and killed supernaturals (or supes) out of fear. But something changed recently. For the past year )at least), supes have been hunted and captured. Why? For entertainment! They were imprisoned, starved, and then forced to fight to the death against other supes gladiator-style in the Arena. This is while being in their human form and unable to shift.
The main character in this story is Poppy who has been tortured for years by her Alpha grandfather because she was wolfless. She scented her mate and when she followed the scent it led her to Nash, an Alpha heir for another pack. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of a sexual encounter with Cynthia at the time and he decides to reject her in favor of Cynthia, his chosen mate.
This story was so well-written that I was captivated from page 1! It takes popular tropes (shifter romance, rejection, and age gap) and puts a unique spin on them. I hesitate to even call this a bully romance as the bullying part is incidental to the story.
Everyone in school hated Lily, a wolfless Omega, because of her father, who was executed for being a traitor. Despite that, she has always been a good student and mostly kept her head down and tried her best to ignore everyone’s bullying. One day she just reached her breaking point and tried to take her own life by slashing her wrists. She would have become successful, too, if not for Cade.
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