Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Get It On Amazon | English Edition
About The Book
La dernière chose qu’ils voulaient, c’était l’amour. Dommage que le destin ait eu un autre plan…
Jude Sullivan n’avait pas envie de se rendre au milieu de nulle part pour sauver des vaches d’un monstre qui les tuait. Mais si cela prouvait au Coven qu’il n’était pas une menace pour la communauté paranormale, il le ferait. Cependant, il ne prendrait pas de familier et ne tomberait pas amoureux du métamorphe le plus sexy de la ville. C’est du moins ce qu’il se répétait…
Personne dans sa petite ville ne savait que Rob Mackenzie était un ours métamorphe, et il voulait que cela reste ainsi. Mais avec une créature surnaturelle en liberté et un étranger séduisant qui fouinait dans les parages, cacher sa vraie nature était plus difficile que jamais. Avec le recul, embrasser le sorcier n’était pas une bonne idée. Surtout lorsqu’il découvre que Jude est son « compagnon destiné ».
Jude et Mack ne tardent pas à réaliser qu’en unissant leurs forces, ils peuvent trouver – et arrêter – le tueur. Mais comprendre pourquoi le destin a lié deux êtres totalement opposés l’un à l’autre pourrait s’avérer un peu plus difficile…
The last thing they wanted was love. Too bad fate had another plan…
Jude Sullivan was not interested in traveling to the middle of nowhere to save some cows from whatever monster was killing them. But if that proved to the Coven that he wasn’t a threat to the paranormal community, he’d do it. He would not, however, take on a familiar or fall for the hot shifter in town. Or so he kept telling himself…
No one in his small town knew that Rob Mackenzie was a bear shifter, and he wanted to keep it that way. But with a supernatural creature on the loose and a sexy out-of-towner snooping around, hiding his true nature was harder than ever. In retrospect, kissing the witch had been a bad idea. Especially when he discovered that Jude is his fated mate…
It’s not long before Jude and Mack realize that if they join forces, they can find— and stop—the killer. But figuring out why fate bound two complete opposites to each other might be a bit more challenging…
The Review
A classic M/M setup, with all sorts of delicious twists, which I read in the French edition. This is a full-on paranormal story, with its roots in all sorts of m/m genres, handled with clever skill by T.J. Nichols.
Here we have a young witch (the French word is sorcier, or sorcerer), who is in trouble (again) for misuse of his very rare power—controlling electricity. Jude Sullivan was a foundling in foster care when his powers emerged, shorting out an entire hospital. He was never trained or given any support by the Coven, the ruling council of the sorcerers’ world. Instead, after mastering his powers enough to rig a jackpot in Las Vegas, he is called before the Seattle Coven, and then sent to an obscure Colorado town to solve the problem of a creature attacking the local cattle herds. If he fails, the Coven will strip Jude of his magic.
Right from the start, you know something is off. It’s almost as if they want him to fail. Or, maybe, die.
What the Coven doesn’t account for is Jude meeting Rob “Mack” Mackenzie, the popular local garage mechanic. Like Jude, Mack is unique in the town of South Mercy. Unbeknownst to his neighbors, Mack is a bear shifter (the great French word métamorphe). Nobody knows his secret, but Jude reads him immediately—and, awkwardly, assumes he’s the creature attacking the herds.
Even more unexpected is the instant link, that both men feel after a first kiss. Not only are they both magical creatures, but they are fated mates—Mack is Jude’s familiar. A huge bear shifter and a little blond twink with electricity sparking from his fingertips.
Yikes.
In classic romance style, Jude and Mack have to figure out what they’re supposed to do, and without letting the human world know of their existence. As anyone who’s read fated mate stories, the fated part of it appears without prior consent—and nobody likes to be told who they’re supposed to spend the rest of their lives with. Nichols takes the doubly awkward first encounter and puts it in the context of an even more impossible task—completing the task the Coven has handed to Jude with no preparation and little understanding of the potential of Jude’s powers.
There is very interesting moral complexity infused into the story, as Nichols inspects the realities of being magical in a world where magic cannot be acknowledged publicly. Ultimately, intriguing plot aside, it is the relationship between the two young men that matters most, as each one struggles with his attraction to the other, and the unasked-for implications of that attraction.
This was, in English, the first of thirteen “Fated Mates” books by Nichols. I’ve purchased the next one in the series just to see where the author will go.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.