![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This one was a misfire for me, surprisingly because I really enjoyed the first.
The heroine, Sadey, just found out that her husband Dallas had been married to her schoolfriend Maris the entire time he was dating her. I am very confused by how she could have not figured this out for literally years given that Dallas and Maris lived together and owned a ranch together!
She dumps his sorry ass and apologizes to Maris in a bar. Sadey expects Maris to hate her, but she’s actually very nice. Dallas comes in and is a dick. Maris is there with her mate and the werewolf brothers, Hunter and Wes. Hunter goes absolutely nuts on Dallas and has to be dragged away and shoved into a truck before he turns into a wolf in public!
Wes orders Hunter to stay away from Sadey, since she clearly makes him insane. Hunter does, but writes her a letter by cutting and pasting magazine letters, which she calls a “serial killer letter” but is charmed by, and writes him a letter in return which he has her read aloud because he reads so slowly/poorly. This is actually pretty cute.
In the previous book, Hunter came across as the quiet, good-natured, scholarly one, as opposed to his brother Wes who’s a lady’s man, hot-tempered, and kind of a dick. In this book, he has a total personality change and is portrayed as having a cognitive disability caused by brain damage from birth, which means he talks and acts like a werewolf Forrest Gump. He can barely read or write, only Joyce had previously set up that he was the one who read all the books to help Maris survive so he inexplicably has all these books that he reads and understands, but he can also barely read a letter and has an extremely limited vocabulary.
It turns out that Hunter is dying of a broken heart which has magically turned his blood black and given him wounds that won’t heal, because his brother left him for dead in the previous book. He nevertheless has sex with Sadey. Their whole courtship is weird as it ping-pongs between being so cute it’s twee and the angst of him dying, which makes the whole thing just bizarre. Especially as no one really does anything about him literally dying for ages even though they all know about it for most of the book.
Finally Wes decides to fix him, and Sadey moves across town. The entire emotional crux of the story, in which Hunter is healed, happens off-page and without the heroine’s involvement. Wes and Hunter reconcile, oh yeah and Sadey and Hunter are an item, yay happy ending! And then there’s a hook for the next book, which is more interesting than anything that happens in this book.
The book had a lot of noticeable typos, missing periods, the hero’s name not capitalized, etc. It clearly wasn’t proofread at all.
The hero really did not work for me. He’s very passive and under his brother’s thumb. The cognitive disability was portrayed like older books write “simple” characters. He’s big and strong and nice, but the whole package was really, really not my romantic fantasy. And the heroine comes across as childish and immature.
The climax not only happens off-page, but isn’t about their relationship at all, which is weird in a romance. Genre romance is about the romantic relationship; there can be other important relationships as well, but they can't displace the romance. Even if reconciling with your brother is hugely important, normally the heroine would also be present for that scene, or have talked the hero into doing it, etc.
On the plus side, Maris and Sadey's relationship is nice. Joyce usually goes out of her way to portray friendships between women, and manages to do so here even despite using the "most women can't be shifters" trope that normally works to prevent that.
Make Her New (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 2)
The heroine, Sadey, just found out that her husband Dallas had been married to her schoolfriend Maris the entire time he was dating her. I am very confused by how she could have not figured this out for literally years given that Dallas and Maris lived together and owned a ranch together!
She dumps his sorry ass and apologizes to Maris in a bar. Sadey expects Maris to hate her, but she’s actually very nice. Dallas comes in and is a dick. Maris is there with her mate and the werewolf brothers, Hunter and Wes. Hunter goes absolutely nuts on Dallas and has to be dragged away and shoved into a truck before he turns into a wolf in public!
Wes orders Hunter to stay away from Sadey, since she clearly makes him insane. Hunter does, but writes her a letter by cutting and pasting magazine letters, which she calls a “serial killer letter” but is charmed by, and writes him a letter in return which he has her read aloud because he reads so slowly/poorly. This is actually pretty cute.
In the previous book, Hunter came across as the quiet, good-natured, scholarly one, as opposed to his brother Wes who’s a lady’s man, hot-tempered, and kind of a dick. In this book, he has a total personality change and is portrayed as having a cognitive disability caused by brain damage from birth, which means he talks and acts like a werewolf Forrest Gump. He can barely read or write, only Joyce had previously set up that he was the one who read all the books to help Maris survive so he inexplicably has all these books that he reads and understands, but he can also barely read a letter and has an extremely limited vocabulary.
It turns out that Hunter is dying of a broken heart which has magically turned his blood black and given him wounds that won’t heal, because his brother left him for dead in the previous book. He nevertheless has sex with Sadey. Their whole courtship is weird as it ping-pongs between being so cute it’s twee and the angst of him dying, which makes the whole thing just bizarre. Especially as no one really does anything about him literally dying for ages even though they all know about it for most of the book.
Finally Wes decides to fix him, and Sadey moves across town. The entire emotional crux of the story, in which Hunter is healed, happens off-page and without the heroine’s involvement. Wes and Hunter reconcile, oh yeah and Sadey and Hunter are an item, yay happy ending! And then there’s a hook for the next book, which is more interesting than anything that happens in this book.
The book had a lot of noticeable typos, missing periods, the hero’s name not capitalized, etc. It clearly wasn’t proofread at all.
The hero really did not work for me. He’s very passive and under his brother’s thumb. The cognitive disability was portrayed like older books write “simple” characters. He’s big and strong and nice, but the whole package was really, really not my romantic fantasy. And the heroine comes across as childish and immature.
The climax not only happens off-page, but isn’t about their relationship at all, which is weird in a romance. Genre romance is about the romantic relationship; there can be other important relationships as well, but they can't displace the romance. Even if reconciling with your brother is hugely important, normally the heroine would also be present for that scene, or have talked the hero into doing it, etc.
On the plus side, Maris and Sadey's relationship is nice. Joyce usually goes out of her way to portray friendships between women, and manages to do so here even despite using the "most women can't be shifters" trope that normally works to prevent that.
Make Her New (Kaid Ranch Shifters Book 2)
