My review disappeared and I want to cry. But basically, I got asked about this book and did a reread. RTC.

WHAT I LIKED ✅

👍🏾 The porn names. *snorts*

👍🏾 The interludes! I really liked that the interludes gave us glimpses into fan reactions

👍🏾 Sex work and the porn industry weren’t justified as being in the book. The characters didn’t need to be traumatized or abused to be in the industry. That was such a nice change a pace

👍🏾 Switching! More than two handfuls of MM books will have very strict top-bottom roles and any sort of BFY (bottoming for you) is considered some sort of religious gift. And that’s fine, but I enjoy switching, vers, and sides in MM without needing it to be some religious experience. Richard and Hunter have in their contracts that Hunter tops Richard. And that’s all fine and well, but I enjoyed seeing Hunter and Richard discuss their sexual position preferences a lot! Learning that Richard didn’t really care for bottoming and Hunter didn’t care for topping, and, sure, they did it both for a scene and off-contract, but it’s not some religious experience that alters anything. Richard will most likely 96% of the time top, but he’s willingly to let Hunter be a power bottom. And Hunter will 96% bottom, but he may occasionally top.

👍🏾 Low stakes angst and coziness 🥺 It was cute seeing Richard actually be scared that Hunter felt nothing for him. And it was also cute the ways Richard and his wolf provided for Hunter.



WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE ❌

🛑 Hardin just…disappeared.

🛑 How this was written. I’m not a fan of using all caps to allude to shouting in a visual gag. And, I think the prose sometimes lost itself in the subject of a sentence. When your main characters have the same pronouns, you need to use their names to clarify who is the subject. But the writing would go as far as to reduce to pronouns and shorten sentence to pronoun - verb that I was lost on who was the subject and what was the predicate. 

🛑 How scents were described by Richard. His descriptions sounded AI generated. I think I need a bit more from Richard or the dialogue adjusted so I could believe Richard had such an artistic license.

🛑 The Ending. The ending was Hunter quickly meeting Richard’s pack. That entire introduction was rushed, and I couldn’t understand why it happened. We meet Richard Alexander Knox’s mum for all of two seconds and then… Yeah. It just ends. And it ends in a way that I thought there was more to read, but, no, it just ends that way. Hm.


MY WISHES 💫

⭐️ Domestic scene! In DickHunt’s contract, they had a scheduled “domestic scene” where they pretend to be a newly mated couple—and it was just largely montaged. I wanted to be kicking my feet and grinning ear to ear about the romance and I felt deprived.

⭐️ So we had a short implication of Hunter’s home life and then we got rushed through Richard’s own. I think, honestly, I would’ve removed the pack meeting and saved it for an entire novella revolving around meeting the family on both sides. That way, there’s some more room to introduce people and set the stage. I would’ve loved it if Max, Hardin, and Hunter teased Richard about doing a packbang do-over 🤣

OVERALL

This was a great 4⭐️ book and a ridiculous MM book in a good way. It was porn with plot ironically and unironically.