Reviewed by Sarina
WARNING: While not explicitly stated within the description, there are situations within this story that can be considered of Dubious Consent. Please be aware of your triggers.
TITLE: Landscapes
AUTHOR: K.D. Grace
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 57 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2016
BLURB:
Alonso Darlington has a disturbing method of keeping landscaper, Reese Chambers, both safe from and oblivious to his dangerous lust for the man. But Reese isn’t easy to keep secrets from, and Alonso wants way more than to admire the man from afar. Can he risk a real relationship without risking Reese’s life?
Note: Landscapes has been previously released as part of the Brit Boys: On Boys boxed set.
REVIEW:
*sigh* Okay, let’s talk a minute, shall we? I can’t imagine that I’m the only person that goes into a new book with a certain set of expectations based on the information available about what they’re about to read. In this case, my only concrete expectation was that this was a m/m story with a bit of an enigmatic description that piqued my interest. Unfortunately, what I wasn’t expecting were the fairly descriptive M/F sex scenes that take place in the first half of the book and I’m perfectly willing to admit that completely skewed my thoughts about the rest of the story. The endgame in the book was m/m but the author put more effort into the m/f interactions than on the ones between the main characters and that was just really off-putting and, truthfully, if I’d known there was m/f in this book I would’ve skipped it altogether.
Alright, that being said, I did like the fact that there was a strong female character in the story as sometimes that can be lacking in the m/m genre and I was fascinated by the abilities Talia possessed in the sharing of feelings/memories/impressions etc. Alonso was kind of your typical paranormal entity in that his behaviors were both stereotypical and expected; I didn’t really feel any strong feelings about him in one way or another and that was a little disappointing in a main character. Reese was a bit more interesting and I liked that when he didn’t like what was going on that he left rather than just giving into the situation but my feelings on him were pretty much the same.
I just….really didn’t care for this one. I fully admit that I would’ve liked it better if there hadn’t been such explicit m/f sex (more than once, even) but the overall dubious nature to the relationship between Alonso and Reese didn’t endear me to the story either. While their interactions did improve by the end of the book there wasn’t enough there to redeem the story in my eyes and I was more than happy to be done with it. If you like paranormal stories and don’t have any issues with the things I’ve mentioned you might enjoy this one but I really can’t recommend it and I won’t be reading it again.
RATING: 
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