Moonstruck Media, $0.99, ISBN 978-1476320908
Fantasy Romance, 2012
Belinda Boring is certainly a memorable name, I’d admit, but still, having that name on the cover is just tempting evil people to make unfortunate wise-ass remarks about the cover having a warning to readers about the story within. Why not Belinda Buzzworthy or Belinda Bustle?
Anyway, Forget Me Not (a) is part of a series, Mystic Wolves, (b) has shapeshifters, and (c) presents romance as a complex algorithm involving the scent of your undies crossed with the product of plot convenience and how fast the author needs to end the story minus all the ugly people that are not allowed to be part of the mate lottery because we cannot have ugly people mating, we just can’t because the very idea indeed.
On the bright side, there’s more to this story than basic formula regurgitated without any cursory warm up, so there’s that. The author is also determined to make sure that I don’t really experience any of the fun stuff here, so there’s that too.
Our heroine Darcy doesn’t have much of a personality, so the author pulls the old trick of pitting her against this aggressive, “I know what I want, and I want it!” bitch that is full of fire and… wait, who am I supposed to root for again?
Anyway, Darcy, the heroine is upset because she knows that she is the true mate of our hero, Mason, but Amber, who declares herself the true mate of Mason, is not going to let her position be usurped that easily. This is just scratching the surface of the story, as there are plenty of allusions to dramatic events in the previous story—which naturally I have not read because I am pulling things out of my pile of unread books at random—and equally dramatic flourishes in this story…
…. which I am never privy to because the story is from Darcy’s point of view. Because she is such a sweet and docile heroine, she is ushered out of danger promptly each time there is some actually exciting development taking place. This means that whatever happens, I learn about it second- and thirdhand from other characters’ accounts.
Is this some kind of groundbreaking new approach to making sure that I will never read anything fun in a story? Why make an action-packed story only to shove the heroine, and hence me, out of the scene the very moment anything fun is starting? I don’t get it.
Anyway, I am predisposed to liking this one tad more than the usual mate-mate-matey-o-mate stuff because of the effort taken by the author to flesh things out better, but still, why make a plot that requires the heroine being pushed around like a bag of turnips for her safety, and then limiting the story through such a narrow point of view?
If anything, this is one story that demands the perspectives of other characters that are on the front line, as “Oh, I’m in danger again, so they wheel me out of it, and I feel so sad because other people are confronting the danger and protecting me again!” over and over is not what I’d call a compelling read. It’s like reading about a fight from the perspective of a person that has been cowering in the basement all the while. Who cares? I want to see the fight taking place!
So, this is a readable story that manages to be tad more interesting than the usual mate-me-oh stories out there, but that’s despite the author’s best efforts to make sure that the story is as dull as a dial tone.
