Reviewed by Dan & Marieke

As you can see from this Duo-Review, even we reviewers don’t always agree with each other!

TITLE:    Wrong Turn

SERIES:       The Shenandoah Pack #1

AUTHOR:     Taylor Law

PUBLISHER:  Self Published

LENGTH:     98 Pages

BLURB:

After a long, hard year filled with stress and heartache, Jessie Rohen decides to take a vacation to visit his friend and get away from real life for a little while, hoping it will help him heal. On the way, he has an accident and is injured. He wakes up with no memories of his past, not even of his name.

Xander Dane is a wolf shifter and Second of his pack. He saves Jessie’s life, only to realize Jess is his mate. Xander has been in the closet his whole life. Coming out may be harder than ever because not only does he have to tell everyone he’s gay and risk exile, but he has to tell his mate he’s part wolf. Since Jessie can’t remember who he is, Xander has to take a chance on a man who may have a life waiting for him somewhere else – a life that doesn’t include Xander.

REVIEW By Dan

Jessie Rohen graduated from college, his mother died, and he discovered his college recruiter lied to him about how easy it would be to get a job in the business world with his degree and how much money he would make immediately. Show of hands if you’ve been there, done that!

Jessie’s best friend Camdon, who is more like a brother, has invited Jessie up to the lodge where he works as a hunting guide. Camdon was lucky, he found the perfect job immediately after college and is settled. He figures Jessie coming to visit for a week will help calm Jessie down.

Well, it might have. Only problem, Jessie took the wrong road and is on the wrong mountain.   It is raining really hard and Jessie is lost! Then a huge white wolf jumps out in the road in front of him! Jessie spins out and almost goes over a cliff, but stops in time. That is until the mudslide comes along…

Xander Dane is a wolf shifter. He was the huge white wolf in the road, but ran off with his pack mates after Jessie’s car stopped. When he hears of the mudslide he runs back and rescues Jessie from where he is buried in the mud. But why does the man smell so nice? What is happening to him? It is almost like a mate bond, but male wolves don’t mate with males…

I really liked Taylor’s shifter story. I’m really hoping there is more to come, since this is a re-release, billed as book one in a new series, and the end is kind of open! I recommend the book. This is a new expanded version of a previously released story, which many found too short.  It is still fairly short, so an easy read, but is more complete in details etc. which I believe makes  it a much better read than the original, although in that I’m only going on previous edition reviews.

This one is a little different than other shifter stories I’ve read in the m/m genre, in that heterosexuality is the norm and gay wolves aren’t supposed to exist.  Happily for both Jessie and Xander they do!

I think you will enjoy the story if you’re into shifters.  Do yourself a favor and pick it up today!

RATING:

REVIEW by Marieke

Jessie Rohen is driving to a friends when he almost hits a wolf, his car gets stuck in the mud and a mudslide pushes him off a cliff. So far the story was good, even if the writing was a tad awkward.

The wolf was wolfshifter Xander Dane, a second in command in the pack. He rescues Jessie and brings him home. Xander recognizes that Jessie is his mate, and this is both thrilling and scary at the same time. The others of the pack don’t know he’s gay and he’s not eager to come out. But a mate’s a mate and you can’t hide that.

Jessie wakes up with no memory of who he is and why he was on that mountain. He does know he’s gay, because he’s instantly attracted to Xander. Somehow he remembers a part of his name––that used to be his nickname–– and he tells Xander his name is Ro.

Xander is scared that once Ro recovers his memory, he’ll leave to get back to his own life. Little does he know Ro doesn’t really have a life and that’s why he was on his way to see his friend. During the time Ro doesn’t have his memory and Xander helps him recover, the two men bond. But when Ro wants to get out of the house, Xander acts completely differently. He’s distant and uncomfortable. Ro and Xander have a fight and Xander ends it with a public kiss, outing himself.

When Ro finds out Xander is a shifter, they finally bond. But it’s not the happily ever after Jessie Rohen thought it was going to be. Xander has a lot to learn about relationships and communication.

The story itself was pretty fun, not too original but also not totally cliché. I liked Jessie a lot even if his thinking was sometimes a bit odd. It was Xander I had problems with. His completely unpredictable behavior comes out of the blue. There was no indication of why he started acting like a weirdo after the mating, so it didn’t make sense at all. Also his behavior before the mating was pretty erratic. The bits that did make sense were nice.

The biggest problem I had with this story was the writing. It was stilted, awkward and just plain unbelievable. Not that paranormal is ever believable but this was unconvincing even for a shifter story. I really wanted to like it, because the whole idea was fun. But the writing just ruined it for me. If you can look through that, then this is a good story to read. But for me it was a 2.5 hearts. Keeping in mind that this could be totally my issue I’ll rate it 2.5 hearts, because ––as I said before––the whole plot was kind of nice.

RATING: 

BUY LINKS: 

Amazon

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