Customer Reviews

Without Reservations: With or Without, Book 1

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I'm female, straight and over 50 -- does that disqualify me from enjoying this story? I hope not because I found it a flat out fun read. How can you not like a book where the hero finds his soul mate and the mate is the wrong gender? I loved the line "you're my mate, I just haven't figured out what to do with you yet". Not classic literature but nice characters with enough of a plot line that you keep reading. If this was chick lit, it would be called "great beach read." So read it, already.

This is a wonderful paranormal gay romance! The main characters have great chemistry, and the story is fast paced. And, despite the tag line, this isn't about a straight man being "turned gay" by true love. Chay has had relationships with women, but he has also experimented a little with men. Once he gets over the suprise of having a male mate, he works to make a life with Keaton. The werewolf aspect of the story is not the main focus, but it provides a great backdrop.

Like many gay romances, there is a lot of angst as the men overcome obstacles, but there is also a lot of humor. Langley is an excellent writer. There is frequent hot sex, but the two men also build their relationship outside the bedroom. This is part of a loosely connected series called the "With or Without" series. The first story, "With Love" can be found in the anthology "Hearts from the Ashes" and feature alpha werewolf Devlin and his new mate, the omega Laine. The next book, "With Caution" is coming soon. I highly recommend all the books by this author.

I purchased this book because it had two of my favorite things; werewolves and male/male romance. It made valiant attempts at both, and even some effort toward plot, but the end result were repeating dull scenes of overdone "happy home life" interjected with decently written porn and shallow drama easily resolved by the next chapter.

The book does have a strong start; the author does a good job setting up the characters' personalities and the outlining the potential future conflicts of their relationship. There's racial tension and the expected homophobia tension. The author is also obliviously trying to avoid the "stereotypes" of fictional gay couples having a wimpy "female" role and a strong and controlling "male" role, and does so admirably. Alas for my tastes, the supernatural angle of werewolves is used as a plot device for explaining how quickly the two guys fall for each other.

It begins to loose it's "oomph" after that, as the next several chapters center around the two characters getting hard-ons for each other and their relationship being held up by the infamous "I'm gay, but you're not, even though you say it's okay and you love me anyways, I refuse to date a straight guy" scenario. Once they resolve this, everything quickly moves into them living together, having sex, and cute moments with the their pet puppy. Oh yeah, and the one guy nearly dies a few times.

For myself, the characters did not have a distinctive enough voice or enough spark to their relationship for the Happy Family Life moments to really hold my attention. They weren't bad, there just wasn't enough too them; they revealed nothing new or interesting about the characters themselves and showed no changes or development in their relationship. Conflict was, as stated above, easily resolved, and conveyed no real depth of feeling. I couldn't connect with the seriousness of any given situation because I couldn't really believe how strongly the characters were feeling it. Instead of coming off as a well-rounded, occasionally unstable, developing relationship, it instead felt like I was reading someone's opinion of what they thought a relationship SHOULD be -- complete with kissy moments, cute pet names, snappy dialog, and a clever joke to round up each scene.

All that said, if you like brain fluff and good man-on-man porn, than you might get into this one. The overall writing isn't bad and the characters aren't annoying. But if you're looking for substance and engaging characterization, this isn't it.

Not enough descriptive narrative of places, things. This story lacks sufficient character development and not enough plot development. I am wary of double-spaced stories because it usually means not enough content. This is true. Typically in a double-spaced story the author does not take the time to put us in the setting but rather uses one very long sentence to sum up something in which she should really take her time and add A FEW MORE WORDS!

A simplistic story that lacks any imagination. Just read the synopsis. It is enough.

I like the plot, and I find it refreshing that I could only spot one typo in the book, given how many I had found in other published, pro writers' works. The writing is okay, but I seriously considered giving up halfway through and had to make myself finish reading this book because:

1. I had a hard time finding the word "prick" hot. And it was used a lot throughout the book. I prefer "cock" and "dick", but at least the author didn't use "manhood" or "tool" or "meat" - thank all the gods of such things.

2. There was an awful lot of sex. And trust me when I say I'm the last person on earth to complain about too much gay porn, but since I got jolted right out of the story every time I saw the word "prick", I could not enjoy the sex at all and I started skipping the sex scenes about the third time it happened - which means I probably skipped about half the book.

3. I got confused because the author kept switching between the names Keaton and Bit (Chay's nickname for Keaton). If there was any reason other than that she didn't want to keep using the same name over and over again, I certainly didn't get it. When the two names kept popping up in the same paragraph, it was simply irritating. It also prevented me from getting into the story and developing feelings for the character.

4. Like another reviewer R. Stewart said, people do NOT use each other's names constantly during every conversation. Another big turn-off that made it so irritating to try to finish reading the book.

In conclusion, this is not a book that I would recommend, but I got it for USD[...] (it's USD0.00 if you buy it the US Kindle store) so I'm not complaining too much.

This reads as though written by someone very young with little in the way of writing experience (and missing the services of a good editor). The dialogue is stilted, the plot flimsy, the "conflict" in the narrative laughable, the characterizations two-dimensional, and the sex boring and repetitive.

Of particular annoyance was one main character constantly referring to the other by a cutesy nickname, to the point where I began to forget the character's real name.

I strongly suspect that the author is a big fan of yaoi manga, because Keaton is a poster boy for the big-eyed, helpless, girly-looking uke boys. His main jobs in the story are to have badly written sex and to be rescued. All of it repeatedly. He's not a character, he's an unintended caricature.

Where was the editor for this piece of...travesty? Why wasn't this sent back to the author with "Please contact us again when you've learned to write realistically," written on it in red ink? And why are people giving this three to five stars? If you want a five star m/m book, check out Jordan C. Price's "Psycop" series. Now there's an example of everything a story should strive to be, everything this one fails at.

It starts well, the theme is fascinating but the author was unable to keep the thread up to the end. After the 50 first pages it becomes predictable and the sex so very repetitive.

Yeah, yeah, the two protagonists are werewolves; so get used to it. They're sexy, interesting guys, thrown into a romance neither would have predicted, especially Chay. Then they go through some great exchanges and scenes working out what it means to find your life partner and discover he's not what you were expecting. Then, finding out he's better than you expected, even if Chay's mother and best friend don't think so. Then finding out someone is out to kill the relationship, literally, and both protagonists and their loved ones all have to work hard to discover who and why and stop him. I loved the characters (yes, their being werewolves calls for some suspension of belief) and have found myself thinking a lot about the story after finishing reading it. Langley created some wonderful guys in "Tin Star" that won my interest and support, and she's done it again with Chay and Keaton. I've read the book twice already and will read it again many times. Well worth the time and effort.

I didn't really find most of the aspects and elements in this book to really be convincing at all.

Like another review has said, many conflicts get resolved too quickly: Chay getting over his mate being a male for example. Their relationship began with a rocky start but instantly became "established" without showing a gradual growth to that change. I definitely did not really like the way Chay behaved toward Keaton the moment Chay decided to accept Keaton as his mate. It felt out of character. I just wish the author slowed the pace of the relationship to develop it more. Maybe I would be more convinced in Chay's actions.

It seems as if the author sped it up so that they can fit as much sexual activity between the two as much as possible. Boy, was there a lot of it! Almost literally, half of the book is dedicated to the two main characters pleasuring one another. I will also add that this happens frequently scene after scene. As I was reading, in my head I was thinking, "Okay, you guys are done being intimate, can we just get on with the story now?" It didn't happen until many chapters later. One gets fatigued when this much "porn" is thrown at them at once. Most of these scenes do not develop the relationship between these two characters either. Sex can just be sex, but when introduced and written with incite, sex can give important information about the characters involved.

The book had its comical and adorable moments that had me reacting in a "oh, they went there" or a "that is too cute" manner. However, there weren't enough of these moments to carry the flimsy plot and the underdeveloped characters. The book started out with a good premise, but it fell short the moment the two main characters accepted each other. If you're just looking for a very erotic romance, then this will fit your bill. If you're looking for something much deeper, look elsewhere. This book isn't terrible, but it isn't as great as many of the reviews say.

I have another of her books on my shelf waiting to be read...but I am not sure I am going to after reading this one. The writing was boring. I normally hate the idea of shoving a Thesaurus at people, but I think this author could benefit from it.

I couldn't bond with the characters. We never got a good glimpse inside their heads. They went into long explanations that didn't need to be told out loud, used for author convenience. Heck, this book would be 1/3 shorter if the author didn't explain redundant things so much.

One of the big attractions of this book was the werewolf idea. And I think we got to see them as wolves once. The brief shifting when threatened or the silly eye changing doesn't count. And that one scene was so short than why bother?

It felt like this world was being made up as the author went along. If they could heal so quickly, why did Keaton take a bit to heal from his concussion?

I got tired of them getting hard every time one of them walked into a room. Instead of saying 'his prick hardened' like 50 times whenever they see each other, what about some of the emotional lust? (P.S., a leaking prick is not sexy, but annoying).

Pita, the little puppy, was so annoying. It served no purpose other than to pounce and tug at pant legs.

Keaton was supposed to be his bad-boy and have a temper. We were told this a lot, but I don't remember any outbursts or anything from him.

A few cute moments, I chuckled a few times when the boys were goofing off, and I guess the twist was nice, but I was just trying to get through the book at that point and stopped caring about the characters enough to find any suspense.

Erotica that wasn't very erotic, with a smidgen of plot. Felt like a rush-job.