Megan Derr

There is a reason that Megan Derr is one of my favorite authors, and this is a good example of it!

I read this straight through, my first action of spring break :D, and was smiling and laughing and clapping and so engrossed all the way through. It's one of those books where you feel excited and ready and raw, like you are the character, not just reading his or her story. And even though I guessed some things, it didn't go quite the way I expected, and Megan Derr writes in such a show more heart-effecting way, that quite honestly, the specifics don't matter. It is THAT good a book--and I never say that!

One of my favorites for the year already; I am totally in love!

P.S. Don't read any other reviews so that you won't accidentally stumble over spoilers! show less

edit: I recently found out that the (female) author of this thinks that m/m is primarily for women and gay men shouldn't say anything about it, which, honestly 0% surprises me after reading this book. while I did get some enjoyment out of Embrace (especially the second part where things improve a little), it has always felt fetishistic, and I'm going to remove my rating.

I'm leaving my review up because it details some of the things that are very wrong with this book.

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I received a copy show more through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was drawn to this book because it’s a supernatural m/m novel with a beautiful cover, but in the end it mostly just left me feeling uneasy.

Note: this is not a spoiler-free review.

First, the whole premise of the story is that in this world, vampires are kept by nobles as Pets – basically slaves. The main romance is between the main character, Aubrey and his Pet, which is already sketchy. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been (there weren’t any instances of Aubrey taking advantage of Ruthven, and as it gets gradually revealed, Ruthven is much more in control than you’d think), but their relationship still seemed unhealthy to me, although in a completely different way than expected. Namely, Ruthven keeps making advances on Aubrey despite Aubrey telling him to stop, and while it’s not entirely non-consensual, it gives an unhealthy message that you can ignore someone saying no because they don’t really mean it. (This shit isn’t any better because Aubrey isn’t a girl, guys.)

While it’s not clear from the blurb, this book actually has two POVs – the other is the physician and good friend of Aubrey’s family, Stregoni. The first Stregoni POV chapter (and the third chapter in the book overall) is immediately an out-of-context, explicit sex scene between Stregoni, Gilles (Aubrey’s cousin) and Francois (Gilles’s vampire Pet). It is then revealed that they’ve had this kind of sexual relationship for years, even though Gilles and Francois are always cold to Stregoni afterwards and he hates what they’re doing to him emotionally. Overall, it is not at all a healthy relationship.

Later it gets revealed that Gilles has a reason for acting cold with Stregoni and shutting him out, and surprise – the reason is that he, a queer man, has been abused by his father his entire life. The situation is more complicated, but part of the abuse is that Gilles’s father told him that if Gilles ever loved anyone, his father would kill his lover. Now, George isn’t motivated by homophobia in this, and I’m sure he would act the same if Gilles’s lover was a woman, but it’s not. It’s two other queer men.

Moreover, there are like, two female characters in the story who both have names and are alive, and they are both minor characters.

One of these things might be okay, but all of them together kind of just painted a perfect picture of why I’m uneasy about women writing m/m fiction. Unhealthy m/m relationships, vaguely fetishistic sexual scenes, abused queer men, lack of female characters – this book has it all.

I do admit that the book got better during the second half when the characters finally decided to communicate with each other. (Gasp!) Both relationships involving the two main characters got healthier by the end, but that doesn’t erase the start (and in Stregoni’s case, several years of unhealthy bullshit).

I also appreciated that this book had two polyamorous relationships, but as I detailed above one of them is pretty unhealthy, and the other (m/f/f ship that is actually supportive and healthy) is in the past because the two women die in the prologue.

(There was also this one point where a character called Jack was mentioned a few times and I genuinely have no idea who that was supposed to be? Maybe it was somebody’s first name who was usually mentioned by his last name and I just missed it? Idk man.)

tldr; There were some aspects of this book that I enjoyed (I loved the connection between the titles and the cover for example), but overall I wouldn’t really recommend it. show less

First read: 10-12 Dec 2012 - Reread multiple times since in both ebook and audio. Last read 6 Oct 2015.

This is going straight to the pool-room favourites shelf! I absolutely adored this story. Yes it's a fairytale and completely unrealistic, but there is fun, humour and love throughout. What a great combination for me :)

I loved the humility of Cass and the caring attitude of Malcolm. I love a bit of pathos (not over the top) with a great outcome and this delivers. Other than a couple of show more minor spelling errors, there isn't a thing I would change about this book. Although a sequel would be great ;)

Reread April 2021
This is a comfort read for me; in this case it fit the requirements of the required decade perfectly :) I love the cinderfella aspect of this, although in reality, Cassidy's talent achieves his success without any external assistance... Malcolm and his brothers are highly amusing and create the humour needed to offset the mild pathos.

I will no doubt read this again in another year or two ;) show less

So, going into this, I thought it was going to be more of the same old trope: nerd loves jock from afar, is afraid to say anything, helps jock, then forgives jock super easily and gives into his advances right off the bat. But nope! Happily, it went more like this: nerd is a great, prickly, funny, unique guy with self-esteem issues who loves jock from afar; nerd is going to say something, but jock wants help getting someone else; nerd reluctantly helps jock, and ends up going through a show more transformation of his own; jock has to realize his mistakes and has to actually make it up to nerd.

It was very satisfying and so much better than I thought it would be! Wow, Megan Derr can do contemporary with a flair! show less