The Alpha’s Rejected Mate by JK Bartolome

They say that no idea is truly original because everything we create is built on something someone else wrote or made which, in turn, was built on someone else’s idea, too. At times we even end up plagiarizing ourselves! That being said, I believe that, despite the formula, authors should infuse something in their story that will make it stand out, be different, and not easily be thought of as a copy of someone else’s work.

It sounds the same but not

When I started to read The Alpha’s Rejected Mate by JK Bartolome my immediate thought was that this was very similar to Alpha Atlas by Jane Doe without the bully squad of the Alpha to be.

Angel is quiet, shy, and overweight. She tends to wear baggy clothes and people assume it is because she has no sense of style. Consequently, many of her peers ridicule and bully her. In addition, her wolf, Slade, has not shown up yet so they think she is wolfless.

Gabriel is the soon-to-be Alpha. On the day he found out that Angel was his mate, he did not hesitate to reject her. Stupid, weakling Angel did not accept the rejection, she just walked away and decided to leave the pack.

Time passes and she returns as a warrior to train Gabriel’s pack to defend themselves. Does this sound familiar yet? She is no longer the fat, shy, and retiring girl they knew. She was now an unbeatable warrior.

While she was away Gabriel was busy humping every willing she-wolf and Angel suffered through it all. Upon her return he decides to stop all that and accept her as his mate, hoping she does not reject him. Pffft!

Go ahead and call me a grammar nazi

From page one, it is clear that English is not this author’s first language. I’d forgive it if I saw some effort to use a grammar and spellchecker. Sadly, it looks like we have another lazy author here who cannot be bothered to, at the very least, use the tools that come built-in with document software like Word or GoogleDocs. It is so prevalent that these authors think we will just forgive the awful grammar which leads to them not making an effort to fix it.

Be responsible

If doing so feels like more work for them then they should hire an editor or proofreader. Even I cannot claim to be perfect so I religiously check for grammar and spelling errors and sometimes, some still get left behind. The point here is TRYING because the reader can see when you try.

It’s always the same … messed up pronouns, tenses, etc. Sigh.

In addition, I have to add, that anyone who writes in an established genre should research the genre first. It is better to research and get it right than mess up big time and get called on it by a lot of people. Or … create their own world and mythology.

How old are you?

From the way it is written I can only assume that our author is young, or at least wrote it when he/she/they were younger. I gauge this from the juvenile behavior of the characters, and the very limited skill and technique writing in the love scenes (which speaks of inexperience) as the best that could be described is oral sex, and not even very descriptive at that.

He/she/they do not also seem to understand what happens when a female goes into heat. Wolves are like dogs when they go into heat … they will want to have sex RIGHT NOW with any male and every male nearby will have an almost uncontrollable urge to have sex with her. This isn’t fiction, that’s really how it is with canines.

In the standard mythos about werewolves, they react the same way as wolves. So, the fact that the author did not really describe this properly leads me to believe that the author is young and does not know this or … did not do his/her/their research.

To be fair, it is not a bad story.  It just could be better. It doesn’t need massive plot changes. All it really needs is cleaning up at the very least. Do I hate it? No. Do I like it, meh … okay is the best I can give you.  But just to give you perspective, I did finish it. There are only a little over 30 chapters so it isn’t difficult to read.