Golden Angel LLC, $0.99
Fantasy Romance, 2019
When she was 18, Sheila Slater was thrilled. She would be engaged to the man her parents chose for her: Eli Mansfield, whom she had had a crush on since forever. Finally, she would have him touch here, there, and everywhere, and she would finally become a woman under him… no, this is not a medieval romance, people. These people are werebears, and he was going to be the Alpha of Clan Lodge and he would never, ever dislodge her from his… er, side. That is, until he did. Actually, he dislodged his entire clan by announcing that he was leaving them, and then he was off, leaving Sheila all high and dry. Oops.
Then we move to the first chapter, when the story quickly shifts to Eli’s point of view, because we all know that romance readers only care about the guys and their big, thick, hard plot arcs. He’s a polar bear, but don’t ask me why his name is Eli Mansfield instead of, say, something more Inuit. Because this is the current year, maybe he identifies himself as one: a trans-Inuit polar bear or something. Mind you, he also conducts conversations with his inner bear, so maybe this entire story probably takes place inside the head of someone with multiple personalities, like a Split thing, but sadly, it isn’t, and hence this story is far less interesting as a result.
At any rate, Eli’s twin brother now heads the bad entity called the Company – and then Sheila shows up and shoots him, and his inner bear tells him that she is his mate, and then we get the usual mate-mate-mate stuff, and finally within the last two chapters, the author remembers that there is some kind of plot in this story and brings it up in a whatever, mated, so see ya in the next title way.
I think the author never remembered that she marketed this one as an erotic romance, because all this while I find myself wondering where all the erotica stuff is. What, the usual licking and sucking thing is meant to be erotica? Please, I’ve read stuff far more saucy than that in a mainstream romance. So much for me hoping that the polar bear in the title is an euphemism of the sexy kind.
Still, there is something surreal and demented about how Chasing His Polar Bear is put together that I find myself fascinated by the whole thing. As I’ve mentioned, I find myself wondering whether this whole drama is played out inside the head of some guy with multiple personalities and overactive imagination, maybe while touching himself after getting way too high for his own good. The whole talking to the inner bear thing, the way the plot often goes off the rails at places… it’s all most interesting. That doesn’t mean that this is necessarily a good were-mate-filler-plot romance and it’s especially a dud for something marketed as erotic romance, but reading it can be quite the experience.
The million dollar question here is whether the whole thing is brilliant in a demented method in one’s madness way, or just something that happens to come together like this by accident.
