His Temporary Manny is the tenth and final book in the series, ‘Manny’s Mannies’. It stars Alpha Manny and widowed omega, Kristoff. The story is told in first person through both Manny and Kristoff’s povs.



The blurb does a good job of explaining what this story is about so I won’t go into it. I will say that this is the most heavily family and kid-oriented story of the books I’ve read in this series. I would call the story romantic if a reader likes lots of kids in their books. There were so many kids, I quit trying to keep track of who was who.

The authors did a better job of fleshing out the plot in this book than in the other ones I’ve read in this series. The other ones felt rushed and more like ‘let’s get the book out’ without caring much about how well it was written. This was more thorough and gave time for the characters to get to learn about each other.

I liked the characters, Manny and Kristoff, or Kris. I could believe in them as a couple, again I’m comparing to the previous books in this series where the characters weren’t as well rounded and their voices sounded similar. That’s one issue I’ve had with the writing team’s characters the men’s voices often sounded remarkably alike. This time not so much. It was easier to tell them apart. However, a bit more distinction between characters would make the characters pop even more.

There’s an issue that the author team still hasn’t corrected, at least in my opinion. Foreshadowing and small scenes will be talked about, but they aren’t given the attention they deserve. It’s like the team prefers to throw in a scene but not fully explore it. Either remove the foreshadow or remove the scene. For instance, the kittens. Kris comes home to find everyone worried about the kittens hiding under the steps/porch. They talk about buying supplies. Boom! Next thing, Mama cat is in a room with her kittens. This is purely my preference, but that scene would’ve worked better either of these ways: with Kris coming into the house and the kids swarming him to tell him about the cats in the room. Skip the discussion of catching the cats, and Manny could be all sheepish about rescuing them. The other option would be to have Manny crawl and get dirty and bring out the cats, and then the kids would love him more because he rescued the cats and Kris would get more warm feelings about Manny doing such kind things. Either way, the scene would have had more emotion and action. Instead the scene wasted an opportunity of strengthening the bond between the family if Manny rescued the cats, or just wasted time because talking about the cats didn’t move the plot forward in any way. It was an unnecessary scene.

The other scene was the foreshadow when Manny and Kris were going to have sex for the first time. Manny asks Kris a question. Turns out Kris’ answer is incorrect. This is a foreshadowing of what happens later at the doctor’s office. Honestly, I found that scene annoying. Who would trust a doctor who didn’t give answers to his patient as soon as the doctor knew the answer? And then, when Kris and Manny panicked, the doctor was all, “Why would you think that?” Because he never gave them an answer. The doctor was all, “Let’s see what we find.” And then implies that what happened, paraphrasing, “It’s a miracle! Isn’t it wonderful?” If a writer gives a foreshadow, I expect them to answer it, completely, not brush it off without medical, technical or magical explanation. The foreshadow is important. Give an important answer! If an author can’t complete their idea, then don’t use it. I’ve betaed and proofed, and if I'd checked over this story, I’d be all over those two scenes I mentioned in a flash.

I don't want to forget to mention that the authors wrote a fantastic epilogue. It was the best chapter/scene of the whole book, and brought the story to a very satisfying conclusion.

His Temporary Manny is the best book in the series. It relies heavily on the children to move the story along. The characters are believable and their voices more distinctive than other characters in this series. However, the two, what I’ll call incomplete scenes were annoying and cut down on my enjoyment of this book. I give this book 3.5 stars on Booksprout, but Amazon doesn't give half stars so I'll raise the rating to 4 Stars there and here on Goodreads.



I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review. ( )