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A review by nightpeaches
Grayson's Mate by Tamsin Baker
1.0
This review contains spoilers.
I should have DNF:d this one, but I kept waiting for it to get better. Instead it got worse.
The lore and setup didn't make sense to begin with. Only men are shifters, but when Grayson realizes that Reagan is his mate, we find out that it's "unheard of for an Alpha to have a human mate at all. Let alone a male." So if he's not expected to have a human as a mate, but the women are human, and he's not expected to have a man as a mate...I'll just leave that logic puzzle for someone else to solve.
The book then brought in some eye-rolling GFY with Grayson insisting that he isn't gay. But attraction to your mate overrides everything, which begs the question of why sexuality labels even matter to shifters. Some members of this insular pack don't even know the word gay ("Is that what humans call it?"), so they don't seem have the same view on sexuality as human society. But Grayson is adamant that he isn't gay. We also get some casual misogyny, as Grayson gets annoyed when Reagan is upset with him and thinks that "I thought I’d missed all the whiney wife bullshit." But don't worry guys, he's totally all for equality. At least among alphas, betas and gammas, who all happen to be men.
The fact that Grayson having a male mate meant the end of his bloodline was a conflict that seemed to be resolved at the end, when they both were content with Grayson saying that they didn't need to have kids. But then we get a mind-boggling epilogue where some random widow was moved into the house next to theirs and is now having their baby, which she offered to do, so they "shared" her. Despite Reagan being gay. Excuse me? Not to mention that there was never any on-page discussion about whether Reagan actually wanted kids or not (nor do we get his thoughts on it in the epilogue), and earlier in the book Grayson didn't even bring it up because he thought Reagan wouldn't be okay with a surrogate. But the author, for some reason, still decided to make this their HEA.
Honestly, Reagan should have stayed in Melbourne when he had the chance, and I should have DNF:d after the first chapter.
I should have DNF:d this one, but I kept waiting for it to get better. Instead it got worse.
The lore and setup didn't make sense to begin with. Only men are shifters, but when Grayson realizes that Reagan is his mate, we find out that it's "unheard of for an Alpha to have a human mate at all. Let alone a male." So if he's not expected to have a human as a mate, but the women are human, and he's not expected to have a man as a mate...I'll just leave that logic puzzle for someone else to solve.
The book then brought in some eye-rolling GFY with Grayson insisting that he isn't gay. But attraction to your mate overrides everything, which begs the question of why sexuality labels even matter to shifters. Some members of this insular pack don't even know the word gay ("Is that what humans call it?"), so they don't seem have the same view on sexuality as human society. But Grayson is adamant that he isn't gay. We also get some casual misogyny, as Grayson gets annoyed when Reagan is upset with him and thinks that "I thought I’d missed all the whiney wife bullshit." But don't worry guys, he's totally all for equality. At least among alphas, betas and gammas, who all happen to be men.
The fact that Grayson having a male mate meant the end of his bloodline was a conflict that seemed to be resolved at the end, when they both were content with Grayson saying that they didn't need to have kids. But then we get a mind-boggling epilogue where some random widow was moved into the house next to theirs and is now having their baby, which she offered to do, so they "shared" her. Despite Reagan being gay. Excuse me? Not to mention that there was never any on-page discussion about whether Reagan actually wanted kids or not (nor do we get his thoughts on it in the epilogue), and earlier in the book Grayson didn't even bring it up because he thought Reagan wouldn't be okay with a surrogate. But the author, for some reason, still decided to make this their HEA.
Honestly, Reagan should have stayed in Melbourne when he had the chance, and I should have DNF:d after the first chapter.