Miché Publications, $0.99, ISBN 979-8215577981
Fantasy Romance, 2023

Joi Miché’s Magic in the Mountains is a take on the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, or more accurately, the Red Riding Hood here is going to take on the Big Bad Wolf in sexy way. 

June Reding’s family bakery is about to go under, because heaven forbid the heroine dares to be financially stable when she finds love. Her grandmother took out a loan to pay for the heroine’s path to become a fancy chef.

So, I’m desperate for new ideas to make more money. Even if that means I have to climb Fable Mountain late at night looking for some mountain magic. Plus, my Granny Red depends on me. I can’t let her down.

Okay. She hikes all the way there because she hears that dreams can come true to folks that… you know what, it sounds crazy and I don’t want to appear crazy, so let’s just have June the Fancy Chef say it:

Well, because everyone in my tiny hometown of Charming Springs has always talked about bizarre miracles and mystical wonders happening here. And I need some magic in my life right now. Actually, I need all the help I can get, supernatural or not.

Maybe Granny Red should have paid for June’s stay at a special needs school for a little longer, because clearly our heroine needs a little more learning to make better decisions before she inflicts herself onto the outside world.

Then there is Wyatt Wolff.

I live alone for a reason. No one in Charming Springs likes my kind. And I’m content here on Fable Mountain, far away from everyone and everything.

I’m sure he’s just misunderstood, and it’s not like he stinks or licks his testicles in public or anything like that.

By the way, where are his buddies Freddy Foxx and Chucky Capybaraa? Shouldn’t these things come in threes?

Back to June, to no one’s surprise, she’s soon scrambling around like a lost lunatic in a dark and hostile wilderness, all the while hungry and just a few seconds away from rape and death by horny werewolves.

Fortunately, once again a big strong man is around to save these modern women from self-imposed stupidity-motivated acts of self-elimination, and even better, Wyatt the shape-shifting werewolf, is a dude that she has a crush on since forever. That will make the mate-mate-mate thing more palatable, naturally.

Oh, she has no say over whom she has to put out to, but look, he’s hot and she just so happens to be gagging for it, so isn’t mate-matey a good thing? Don’t you desperately wish that you too end up in a situation where you have no choice but to have sex with some guy?

Anyway, Wyatt’s mate-matey instinct immediately acts as a GPS to locate that idiot, thus saving her from being raped and worse by some other werewolf, and now it’s up to Wolfie to now put the S in both sex and saving the heroine from her tomfoolery.

The rest of the story is pretty standard. Save me! Mark me! Mate me! Bite my ass! Knock me up… the same old fare on the menu, in other words.

On the bright side, the sex scenes could get raunchy and I also like that these shifter dudes are not all sunshine and sweetness. Perhaps in a different story with a greater focus on the fantastical  elements and actual plot, the pack dynamics would make for an interesting urban fantasy story.

Unfortunately, everything else about this story revolves around the horrifyingly stupid heroine getting into a really dangerous and dumb situation on her own brainless volition, only to be rewarded by rescue and rogering by the hot guy she has always wanted.

Am I supposed to be happy that this imbecile gets a happy ending instead of the brutal death she richly deserves?