RE Butler, $1.99
Fantasy Romance, 2017
Bet you wouldn’t have guessed from the cover that Every Miraculous Moment is not a romance set on a tropical island, but rather, the heroine Miracle Caprice is a were-dragon and the hero Mack Callahan is a werewolf. You may be going, wait, this is part of a series called Hyena Heat, so where’s the hyena? Hey, don’t look at me; I didn’t write this thing.
Basically, this is a familiar “My ex is a psycho, so thank god I have a new boyfriend to protect me now!” story, only this time the main characters can sprout fur and wings at places ordinary humans don’t normally do. Miracle believes that she is finally free of her ex, but ho ho, we all know better. Mack is an alpha widower, and he is ready to step down from his post and start shagging away his blues like any ordinary werewolf in an island resort full of unmated werewolves, but little does he know that he’s going to be thirsting after dragon honey instead. Of course, the ex then shows up for the obligatory mua-ha-ha in the climax before he gets unceremoniously thrown out like yesterday’s garbage.
Every Miraculous Moment, technically, isn’t a bad read. Sure, the first few chapters can be rough as characters tell themselves things that they should already know, solely to clue the reader in. I’m sure there is a more elegant way for the author to let readers in on the background details of her setting. Anyway, once things get going, it’s not too bad. Conversations are lively and snappy, the pacing is fine, and there is nothing really terrible about the whole thing.
Unfortunately, there is nothing particularly remarkable either. It feels like just another random shifter romance, with the instant mating bond thing lazily passed off as true love and the predictable one-scene appearance of the villain to give the story some semblance of a plot climax. Don’t worry, the sexy kind of climax arrives earlier – much earlier. Nothing here particularly stands out as inventive or interesting.
Worse, when I examine the story a little more closely, the more flimsy and even broken it becomes. Our heroine is a dragon lady, and I personally feel that it’s a major downgrade for her to settle for some stinking, panting wolf guy, but still, this is one of those stories in which romance is hand-waved away as some kind of mating bond thing. Even that aside, I have no idea how the mating bond works. It has been remarked that no werewolf has ever found a mate outside of its kind before, and yet, this bond of Mack and Miracle is waved aside as something awesome and beautiful, so don’t anyone dare to question it. Also, the pack accepts Miracle easily despite the fact that Mack is stepping down as an alpha so nobody has to pay him any mind anymore. Why?
The entire setting is flimsy and the entire mate bond thing is so poorly defined that the everything here can be summed up as: “This happens in every shifter romance, and you love it, so don’t question, don’t think, don’t ask – just consume products.”
The trouble is: I’ve consumed enough, and I’d like something that has, shall we say, little more effort and passion put into it.
