Liquid Silver Books, $5.95, ISBN 1-59578-173-0
Fantasy Romance, 2005
Jayelle Drewry has her werewolf characters behaving in a Darwinist-driven fittest-gets-to-shag pack animal way, with the word “mate” flying left and right as if she gets paid a hundred bucks each time she uses the word. Don’t cringe though, people. While on paper The Other Half seems like an erotic romance cliché, it’s an entertaining, fast-paced, and sexy read.
In this story, the werewolves are one chauvinist bunch in that the males are allowed to shag everyone but females are instructed to sit primly at the sidelines until a mate claims them. Sometimes the male can claim a mate even if the female is not willing. However, Sabine Tate is fortunate in that her father is a powerful alpha werewolf who wants his daughters to be happy so Sabine, considered an old maid at twenty-six, can still afford to look over the males thrown her way with a discerning eye. She wants someone who can challenge both the woman and wolf in her as well as a mate who wants her and not merely the power that comes with being mated to the daughter of a powerful alpha werewolf. One day Roman Silva comes knocking at her door, so to speak, certain that she’s his mate. The thing is, he’s mean, bad, and unlike Sylvia who prefers to live like civilized city gal, he embraces the wildness of his inner wolf and lives like a macho mountain man in the wilderness. They do say one should be careful of what one wish for.
The Other Half is sexy and fast-paced with the alpha hero really coming on very strong to the heroine. However, Sabine manages to hold her own pretty well considering how she is handicapped in this battle of wills by her own hormones. Roman may behave like an alpha male to the point of caricature at times but he has his share of amusing moments of insecurities when it comes to pursuing Sabine. I have a fun time reading this story.
I only wish that the author has shown a little bit more of the emotional aspects in the relationship between the characters because the “love” in this story does come off like a hormonal instinct to mate rather than romance and Roman seems to prize Sabine more as a broodmare to beget his own pack rather than his wife. Still, it is what it is, so there’s that.
