Wren Michaels

I got a free ARC from the author. Thanks!

I specifically chose to read this book because our MCs are lauded as a diverse couple to add a bit of variety in the already hypercompetitive Paranormal Urban Fantasy/Romance genre. The female Reseda is a mixed race Guatemalan colloquially known in Guatemala as a Ladino and the male MC Kane a Southwestern Canadian First Nation indian (I am unsure if the tribe mentioned in the book exists or it is fantasy, I have never heard of it before).

The plot is... well.. I think if it had been polished more with a few more rounds of editing, it would have been very good. I spent half of it feeling flustered and spent the vast majority of my time wondering why Reseda continuously brags to herself she has lost contact with her emotions ever since she became cursed, but then she spends 99% of the story feeling either angsty, irritable, pissed off and/or feisty. Either she is trying to pull off a Scott Pilgrim where she behaves like an unreliable narrator on purpose, or something just doesn't add up. I believe the book mentions she is in her early 20's, but she acts so hormonal and makes so many rash (bad) decisions without thinking about the consequences that she seemed more like a 15 year old.

Kane is... umm... Didn't like him, didn't hate him. I felt ambivalent which is probably not a good sign in a romance novel. When you find one character to be grating and inconsistent and the official sanctioned lover is as meh as a lamp shade, that will be asking for a lot of trouble. I cannot really say whether the steamy sex scenes were good, I was just so indifferent about the book by then that I was much more invested in seeing which Spanish language phrase Reseda would say next because the general story just didn't draw me in at all. BTW, some of the Spanish phrases are missing commas and tilde accents. Spanish tends to like using Oxford commas a lot.

I am rather well travelled in Guatemala. Great country, nice people, horrible bus service. Outside of the Pacific coast and Petén, I have been pretty much everywhere else to a variable degree. When Reseda says a soft curse word, I instantly made a nod and pinpointed she is probably from the Jutiapa area because that is a Salvadorean slang phrase that isn't used nationwide. Perhaps this was unintentional, but when Reseda mentions she grew up in a highland village near the Motagua River, I am placing my bets she lived in the deep southeast of the river (once again, the Jutiapa area, and I'd even place higher bets it was very close to Esquipulas which is a rather interesting town to visit for those interested in seeing unusual Catholic artifacts). I don't believe she grew up in the Baja Verapaz northern ridge of the river. Why? For starters, because she would have spoken to her mom in Quiché instead of Spanish. Southern Guatemala has a very high incidence of Ladinos and their speech and culture is a lot more similar in my biased opinion to rural central Mexico than the Maya highlands of Guatemala. Certainly the southernmost towns in Baja Verapaz don't typically wear Mayan dresses like in Alta Verapaz and to the Atitlan Lake area to the West, but Quiché is widely spoken in the home in that specific region. Many highlanders are multilingual and it is common to see someone speak two Mayan languages with variable degrees of fluency along with intermediate Spanish to communicate with Ladinos and foreigners. I feel increasingly this is Reseda's case also because due to having mixed caucasian ancestry, she would have stuck out like a sore thumb in the highlands. Her personality is definitely not even remotely similar to a woman from the highlands. I find her brashness to be the complete polar opposite of highlanders. One cannot generalize because every person is different but highlander women tend to be so meek towards outsiders that I couldn't even ask them for directions. I had to always ask her accompanying male chaperone. Women from Panajachel tend to be a lot more westernized due to tourism, but I saw this behavior in most of the other highland villages. The highland region of Guatemala is very, very socially conservative, even for Latin American cultural standards). So in a nutshell, I am assuming this character buildup of Reseda was a coincidence, but if it was done on purpose, I will give a small kudos. The deep south of Guatemala is never visited by foreign tourists (everyone goes straight to Lake Atitlán and Tikal), but well worth it. There is a train museum, catholic tourism, the Zacapa rum tour and... Dinosaur fossils! Just be warned bus service in that area is so... soo awfully incoherent and nonsensical. You need to be a Zen master not to go nuts. It might be the accidental reason why Reseda has never visited Monterrico even though it is just a 2 1/2 hour drive by car from Jutiapa.

Now, as much as I will commend these minor nods of Guatemalan research, that still does not save Reseda's cloying personality. Maybe I could be ok with her being sassy once she moved to liberal Vancouver, but the book doesn't really spend any effort delving into this personal clash of culture shock that deeply affects expat kids from very different social backgrounds. Reseda doesn't stumble when switching between languages (Maybe she moved to Canada when she was very young?). Reseda is so hyperemotional but doesn't feel discomfort working part time as a stripper? She doesn't sometimes feel "left out" during conversations filled with Canadian cultural idioms? Doesn't show signs of practicing catholicism in her free time even though she comes from a rural area of a deeply conservative catholic majority country? Sure, there are Evangelist protestants in Guatemala, but it seems quite out of character. Even worse, when she has her super bombastic happy family reunion... she is... flat like a pancake. She shows no emotion with a complete lack of regard to seeing a family member she was so eager to see for ages. This behavior just seemed so out of character for a Latin American that grew up with loving parents. This could have been used as an interesting plot point to emphatize the curse. A huge waste of easy and good character tension.

Now the villain is... Well... I think a Stormtrooper has more malice. I won't spoil who the secret bad guy is but there is like no real sense of danger in the story. I felt more like half of the plot is Reseda's anger issues being angry for petty problems and the bad guy was just sort of written in haste. If you remove the villain and had a strip club client become the big bad guy, the plot would not have really suffered.

I think the only character that was memorable was Dominic. I would have liked him to be the MC. We'd still get the shapeshifting action, mixed pairing, a bad guy and romance. Oh, and he and his love interest (I won't spoil who) aren't toxic posessive people, which is the icing on the cake.

Maybe if the book had been rewritten with Dominic as the MC, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. But I don't know, when you feel very ambivalent with a MC because they do and behave without staying true to the character they claim to be, you feel pulled away like I did. Seems like most reviewers enjoyed this book, so take this review as more of an issue of "not my cup of tea" and maybe you will like it a lot.… (meer)

Recently I read a re-do of the Rose Red fairy-tale that I grew up with. Wren Michaels took the fairy tale I loved and told it with a completely different twist. I am not someone who reads erotica often, but I loved the way that Ms. Michaels was able to take characters I once knew and reintroduce them to me.

In 'Unbearable', Ms. Michaels took Rose Red and made her a strong, independent woman who wasn't afraid to get naked and demand what she wanted from a bed-partner. A strong, sexual woman instead of the shrieking virginal violet most fairy tale heroines are. This story was a novella, but I would have liked a little more back-story. I can see great possibilities with further expanding this story and making it a full-length novel and/or series.

The story line was fresh, the characters were developed but in a full-length novel could have been even more so. The writing was engaging. Yes, I will be reading more from this author. I give this book 4 starts - but only because I thought it could have had a bit more story development and could have been made into a novel but that is just my personal preference.

I was given a copy of 'Unbearable' by Wren Michaels for a fair and honest review.

… (meer)

I found it hard to keep reading, sometimes I didn't really care about the characters. It's not all the book, sometimes fated mates rub me up the wrong way and overly possessive men ditto.
Reseda died and came back and has been trained brutally as a killer (and burlesque dancer) but she's emotionally dead inside. Then she meets Kane, while hunting Werewolves and her life changes forever.
There is so much angst, Reseda claims emotional deadness but it seems that she's overreacting to almost everything; Kane is angsting over the death of an innocent and while they claim to be older the two of them are so teenage it hurts.
There's a lot of showing of the pants feelings they have for each other - so much lust - but they claim love and I don't really see much of that.
Could possibly have been worked on a little more to make it feel more real, but it might appeal more to folks who like their fated mates and setting up the world was interesting.
I received this as part of the Early Reviewer Program.… (meer)

I got a free ARC from the author. Thanks!

I specifically chose to read this book because our MCs are lauded as a diverse couple to add a bit of variety in the already hypercompetitive Paranormal Urban Fantasy/Romance genre. The female Reseda is a mixed race Guatemalan colloquially known in Guatemala as a Ladino and the male MC Kane a Southwestern Canadian First Nation indian (I am unsure if the tribe mentioned in the book exists or it is fantasy, I have never heard of it before).

The plot is... well.. I think if it had been polished more with a few more rounds of editing, it would have been very good. I spent half of it feeling flustered and spent the vast majority of my time wondering why Reseda continuously brags to herself she has lost contact with her emotions ever since she became cursed, but then she spends 99% of the story feeling either angsty, irritable, pissed off and/or feisty. Either she is trying to pull off a Scott Pilgrim where she behaves like an unreliable narrator on purpose, or something just doesn't add up. I believe the book mentions she is in her early 20's, but she acts so hormonal and makes so many rash (bad) decisions without thinking about the consequences that she seemed more like a 15 year old.

Kane is... umm... Didn't like him, didn't hate him. I felt ambivalent which is probably not a good sign in a romance novel. When you find one character to be grating and inconsistent and the official sanctioned lover is as meh as a lamp shade, that will be asking for a lot of trouble. I cannot really say whether the steamy sex scenes were good, I was just so indifferent about the book by then that I was much more invested in seeing which Spanish language phrase Reseda would say next because the general story just didn't draw me in at all. BTW, some of the Spanish phrases are missing commas and tilde accents. Spanish tends to like using Oxford commas a lot.

Now, as much as I will commend these minor nods of Guatemalan research, that still does not save Reseda's cloying personality. Maybe I could be ok with her being sassy once she moved to liberal Vancouver, but the book doesn't really spend any effort delving into this personal clash of culture shock that deeply affects expat kids from very different social backgrounds. Reseda doesn't stumble when switching between languages (Maybe she moved to Canada when she was very young?). Reseda is so hyperemotional but doesn't feel discomfort working part time as a stripper? She doesn't sometimes feel "left out" during conversations filled with Canadian cultural idioms? Doesn't show signs of practicing catholicism in her free time even though she comes from a rural area of a deeply conservative catholic majority country? Sure, there are Evangelist protestants in Guatemala, but it seems quite out of character. Even worse, when she has her super bombastic happy family reunion... she is... flat like a pancake. She shows no emotion with a complete lack of regard to seeing a family member she was so eager to see for ages. This behavior just seemed so out of character for a Latin American that grew up with loving parents. This could have been used as an interesting plot point to emphatize the curse. A huge waste of easy and good character tension.

Now the villain is... Well... I think a Stormtrooper has more malice. I won't spoil who the secret bad guy is but there is like no real sense of danger in the story. I felt more like half of the plot is Reseda's anger issues being angry for petty problems and the bad guy was just sort of written in haste. If you remove the villain and had a strip club client become the big bad guy, the plot would not have really suffered.

I think the only character that was memorable was Dominic. I would have liked him to be the MC. We'd still get the shapeshifting action, mixed pairing, a bad guy and romance. Oh, and he and his love interest (I won't spoil who) aren't toxic posessive people, which is the icing on the cake.

Maybe if the book had been rewritten with Dominic as the MC, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. But I don't know, when you feel very ambivalent with a MC because they do and behave without staying true to the character they claim to be, you feel pulled away like I did. Seems like most reviewers enjoyed this book, so take this review as more of an issue of "not my cup of tea" and maybe you will like it a lot.… (meer)