Tricia Andersen, $3.99, ISBN 978-1393558897
Fantasy Romance, 2020

Middleweight is the second entry in Tricia Andersen’s Hallow Brothers series, and in this one, you just don’t get bonded and stalked by some werewolf guy just because… a magical tattoo appears on your body after the first sexy time to act as a neon sign for “Here is your mate! Stick in it baby!”

It’s a good thing that the mates are always hot and fit, because imagine the sheer terror if one’s mate is fat, short, or, shudder, poor.

Here, the middleweight MMA werewolf—look, let’s just be grateful he’s also not in some MC as well—Micah Hallow is feeling tad jealous that his brother is all mated up and bro here has knocked up the mate too. When will he find a brood mare mate with a magical tramp stamp to call his own?

Well, he finds her after seeing her do her sexy stripper thing on stage and then shagging her silly. No, don’t ask me if mate is some metaphor for crabs or worse. I don’t think so, as this mate thing is presented as something good, but why are we talking about crabs again?

He watched as she bounced across the black painted cement floor until she disappeared behind the curtain. He laughed to himself. “My kind can’t get your shitty human STDs. It might be the only upside to being a werewolf.”

See? Only loser men get STDs.

Fortunately for readers that love slutty heroes but foam at the mouths at the thought of slutty heroines that are unworthy of these heroines, Eve Romero is a stripper but she doesn’t put out. I’m not sure how her pimp-of-a-sort Deacon Ravens puts up with this impertinence of hers when he’s supposed to be the meanest SOB that ever SOB’ed, but maybe he is scared of being cancelled by these wrathful readers.

She does put out to the hero, though, and that’s okay, because she may twerk her ass to a million men, but it’s pure enough for the hero.

Micah kissed her as he undid her jeans. He slipped a couple of fingers inside her and rocked them in and out slowly. “I told you I’ve never been with a woman.”

Oh, that’s… wait, he didn’t say he’s never been with a bloke and various other genders. Dude needs to be more specific!

The tramp stamp of mate then pops up, allowing the author to forgo the bothersome mundane task of actually building a credible relationship, and now Deacon is super mad and wants to whack the heroine because he’s a whackjob. It’s time for Micah to show that puny mortal what a werewolf hunk will do to protect her mate!

Well, this story could be suspenseful if the author hadn’t made it clear from the start that nothing will ever come close to even bending a hair on the hairy and hung Hallow brothers.

Honestly, I don’t know why so many romance authors do this when they also want to pit the heroes against a villain. The best ways to create an interesting suspenseful story of this sort is to let the good guys go from zero to hero or just go balls to the wall crazy and do some anime-style cool move.

The story does neither, maybe because the author believes that the hero needs to be the most awesome in everything to qualify as romantic, so it’s like seeing a tank go against a tricycle. The result is snooze mode activated.

Thankfully, the drama with Deacon isn’t that significant in the long run. The author spends even more time focusing on the same old same old: the furball sex, the mate attraction, and of course, the pregnancy. If all this sounds very familiar to fans of mate-mate-mate shifter romances, that’s because this is pretty much another variation of the formula.

Poor Eve’s entire value as a heroine is summed up by three things: she is hot, she is in trouble, and she is fertile. Micah doesn’t fare any better: he’s hung, he bails Eve out of trouble, and he’s fertile. These two are just generic conveyor belt stereotypes cooked up to go through the motions in the story.

So this story is generic and misses the mark where suspense is concerned. Is there a reason to read it? Well, I have to admit: the sexy times are kinda hot, and the author’s narrative style flows smoothly and well. Thus, this is actually a very readable kind of generic that has its fair share of moments.

Hence, while I may not recall much of this story a few days from now, I’m entertained while I’m reading it. It’s alright, then.