Samhain Publishing, $4.50, ISBN 978-1-61923-375-1
Fantasy Romance, 2016
Poor Natasha Moon. Our werewolf heroine is supposed to marry Daniel, not that she wants to, and Daniel killed her parents when they tried to end her engagement to him. Okay, she isn’t sure whether they were dead dead or hey, what’s another distress to pile on our damsel. When the story opens, she manages to run away with the help of a friend to a Californian safe house.
Liam Grey, our hero, is with the Night Shift Relocation Corporation, which is not some kind of moving agency, in case you’re wondering. The company runs the safe house program, because saving damsels from forced matings with crazy werewolf dudes is what they do. Fortunately, it is also run by hot, sexy werewolf dudes, so anyone who goes to stay at the safe house has a pretty good chance of finding a new hot boyfriend who will kill the crazy ex-boyfriend. I’m surprised lady werewolves aren’t lining up and taking numbers.
Then again, maybe they are put off by Liam. That guy isn’t the smartest runt of the litter – he sees Natasha clutching a phone with all the time, and assumes that she has cellphone addiction instead of, you know, being a smart lady who understands that she may need to make an urgent call for help should her crazy ex-boyfriend and his pack show up and try to brutalize her. He’s all “Ooh! I can never let a woman get close to me and make me smell her womanly scents!” and spends most of his time obsessed over the possibility that a woman may get under his skin and make him even more hot and bothered.
I know, I know, this is a new adult tale, and these people are just kids – Natasha goes to a new college and her new werewolf BFFs, including Liam, hover over her to make sure that she is safe – so Liam thinking with his pee-pee isn’t anything unusual. But Natasha seems to be a more well-rounded creature in comparison, and she is capable to thinking about things outside of how hot Liam is. As a result, this is one of those rare stories where the heroine seems smarter than the hero, not that this is a good thing as I’d prefer both the hero and the heroine to be smart. Also, Liam is such a stereotype. Oh, look at him go on about his bad past, and look at those tattoos on his arms – every bad boy in such stories have some.
Natasha does get into trouble in the end, as how else would the hero get to show his fangs and pound his competition to win the girl? But to be fair, she is led by someone who is in cahoots with her evil ex, so it’s like she’s that much of a dumb dumb.
At the end of the day, though, I find Promised at the Moon a bit of a middling read. The heroine is in a lot of problem, but the story treats Liam’s “Ooh, I was a bad boy once, and that’s so horrible!” melodrama to be a more serious concern, and focuses way too much on Liam being all jealous and possessive over her. That’s not interesting to me, I’d rather read about our heroine becoming a stronger person and what not. The denouement arrives abruptly out of nowhere, making me think that the author has just dropped the whole thing in because she needed a reason to end the story with a bang.
And despite mentions of Liam’s pretty muscles, this one is quite tame in the heat department – despite what the title of the series would suggest, there isn’t much “shifter rising” here, I’m afraid. If you are looking for sexy doggy times with the wolves, those books are over there.
This book is readable, but the author focuses on the less interesting aspects of her plot and everything ends up being rather mundane.
