Dominated by the Wolf

Awkward & Nowhere Near Dominance

This “book” is more of a short story which doesn't even begin to live up to the expectations it set.

There is no true conflict, despite the promise of the main characters handling familial bigotry. Unlike the summary promised, this book isn't about overcoming the prejudices of conservative parents in some kind of allegory to racism. For the most part, it seems that the main character's family are just rude and need time to warm up to the stranger their daughter wants to marry. One domestic good deed is all it takes to land him on their good side, joking and carrying on, and even calling his future in-laws by their first names. It felt more like a cheap attempt to provide character depth than an actual conflict for the characters to overcome.

The main character isn't anxious about her fiance suddenly wanting to be kinky, either, even though the summary claims that she is. Rose eagerly embraces her fiance's proposition to get freaky, complete with horribly cheesy dialogue worse than most videos on free sites out there (if you catch my drift). Heck, she's all too willing to get her freak on while in her parents' home, even! And to talk about it in the grocery store. And to give her wolfman a blowie in the car on the way home, wipe her mouth, then talk to her family like it's no big deal.

That, by the way, is the single most kinky thing that is actually done. Rose claims a few times that what's happening is BDSM and Lorenzo (her fiance) claims he wants to dominate her, but... well, frankly, it's all borderline vanilla with exception for a bit of nibbling and the in-car BJ. No whips, chains, cuffs, or anything other than some really cringey dialogue about submitting and dominating then a bit of generic toy usage and plain, ol' rutting. There aren't even any knots or anything like a lot of werewolf erotica includes, because Rose is grossed out by the inhuman side of her werewolf partner.

What little action exists is... bad. I don't know if it's the wording, the dialogue, or the way they combine, but something about the smutty bits gives me second-hand embarrassment and essentially is the opposite of a turn-on. Not that I was looking for material to... y'know, but I do expect erotica to be steamy and not awkward. The writing in this book, unfortunately, just felt lifeless and uninteresting.

I kept reading, hoping to at least get some good plot or a decent conflict-and-resolution tale, but ultimately it didn't go anywhere. There are random tense shifts, often within the same sentence, and Rose was honestly intolerable. We're talking the kind of woman who thinks she has a right to dictate her man's grooming habits, calls her witch/warlock parents lazy for using their magic, and simultaneously whines about gaining weight while also bragging about how she still looks attractive. She's basically intolerable.

This book isn't the worst I've read, though. It doesn't even come close to that level of annoyance. It just leaves too much to desire and feels like the beginning and end of a novel with the middle gutted out. I'm glad it was only 99 cents.