Reviewed by Lily
TITLE: Splat!
AUTHOR: Alana Ankh
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 129 Pages
BLURB:
Splat!
When a small creature has an unfortunate run-in with his car, Deacon Hearst wonders what in the world hit his windshield. A bird? A butterfly? No, that would make Deacon’s crazy life too simple. It is a fairy—or rather a Sidhe—with a gaze the color of the moon and thus eloquently named Mooneyes. The little creature’s wing is broken, and it’s shivering in the rain, and well… Deacon has a heart, after all.
While nursing Moon back to health, Deacon discovers Moon’s beauty is more than skin deep. Though they’re very different, especially in size, they’re alike in their loneliness, their need for affection. Despite the weirdness of the situation, Deacon finds himself falling for his not-quite victim.
Deacon thinks it’s a hopeless—gah!—love, but what if it isn’t? Moon might just have a few secrets of his own, secrets that could change everything in an instant and weave a different path for them both.
REVIEW:
The sound of “Splat” was the moment when Deacon realizes he hit something with his car. He makes everything worse when he activates his windshield wipers because whatever it was, the thing was stuck to his windshield. As the wipers start to move, the thing starts to twitch. It was struggling and trying to survive the assault from the wipers. That is when Deacon hears a tiny voice screaming, “Stop!”
I loved how the story started. I was easily able to visualize the scene in my head. The part when Deacon looks after Moon so he could recover from his injuries was simply endearing and heart warming. I really liked how these two grow to fall in love with each other. But, like all the fairy tales, whether they are for adults or children, Deacon and Moon face difficult times, which force Moon to make tough decisions that have a huge impact on the young lovers.
The cover of this story looked funny to me, because Moon was drawn in a way that made him look a bit silly, but there was not much fun or humour in the story.
I think that there was too much going on in this story. For example, both Deacon and Moon’s parents had issues with their sons’ sexuality and did their best to try to convince their sons to change their “life styles”. They may have been living in different parallels as fae and human, but these parents were almost identical in their attitude, which made me think it was too cliché. After Moon makes his decision about his relationship with Deacon, the magic element in the story decreases significantly. There were also too many coincidences, such as the man who finds Moon in the city, whose ex happens to be known by Deacon (I am trying not to give too much away).
But soon after Moon and Deacon’s difficult time, comes the sweet end, which was really endearing and fairly believable considering the plot and the nature of the story. Unfortunately, the writer then adds a piece about Deacon’s family dynamics, which dampens the sweet end for me.
All in all, this is a sweet and easy to read adult fairy tale with some really sizzling scenes.
RATING: 
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