Tag: paranormal

Friday Reads | Mate Wanted for Christmas

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

It’s time to start the holiday reads, is it not? I think it is, half of November has gone and before we now it Santa is stuck in the chimney. My first holiday read of the year is Mate Wanted for Christmas by Angelique Voisen. I saw someone list free M/M Christmas stories somewhere and this was one of them. Since I was in the mood for a paranormal read I snuggled up in bed and started reading.

Mate Wanted for Christmas is a short cute story about second chances and about moving on. Pat is a bear shifter with an aversion to alarm clocks. He lost his mate in a car crash ten years ago and every year he’s putting out an ad looking for a date with someone acting as his husband. No one ever responds until, all of a sudden, someone does. Former soldier Jacob has no job and nowhere to go so why not go on a date with a crazy bear shifter?

This is a story you read in one go. It’s written in present tense which threw me a little in the beginning but I got used to it. I wouldn’t have minded seeing a little more of Pat’s shifter side, though.

books2read.com/MateWanted *

For the last decade, bear shifter Pat Singer posted a specific want ad in the December newspaper. Each year, Pat gets the same response—zero. Except this year’s different. Finally, someone agrees to role-play Pat’s dead mate.

Spending Christmas Eve with a rich psycho shifter might seem unreasonable to some. To survive the harsh winter, former soldier Jacob Reynolds has no choice but to turn to desperate measures…except Pat Singer isn’t the crazy bastard Jacob imagines him to be.

The sexy, but reluctant werebear pushes all of Jacob’s right buttons, and if Jacob doesn’t guard his heart, he might end up getting burned.

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

What sharp teeth you have!

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment
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It’s October—the month of monsters! Do you have a favourite monster?

I do. About ten years ago I read every vampire story (mostly PNR) I could get my hands on. This went on for a while so, in the end, I grew a little tired of tall, dark and deadly and started mixing it up a little.

But as the nights grow darker I find myself wanting back to the time when I curled up on the sofa and read a novel a day, most often one including sharp fangs tearing through delicate skin.

But where are the gay vampires?

I know there are tonnes of M/M vampire stories out there, and maybe I haven’t read the right ones. Maybe I grew a little tired of these evil hotties even before I started reading M/M. Maybe, just maybe, the gay vampires are too busy having sex to actually take part in a rememberable plot.

I don’t mean to criticise, not really, but when I think of vamps, the books popping up in my mind aren’t M/M. I’m thinking of Black Dagger Brotherhood (yeah, I know one book in there is an M/M but it’s the weakest in the series in my opinion), Anita Blake, Nighthuntress, Sookie Stackhouse, Chicagoland Vampires, Guildhunter, I even think of Twilight before I think of an M/M story—though that’s probably more because of well-done marketing than a rememberable plot.

So where are the gay vampires? I scrolled through my read list to see which books I’d forgotten because some pale hunk must have swept me off my feet these last years. There must have been someone, right?

Nah, not really.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Jordan Castillo Price‘s Channeling Morpheus series but, as much as Wild Bill drags me in, the stories have little to offer outside the bedroom activities. I really liked Winter Winds by Missouri Dalton about Cillian the deaf vampire. And let’s not forget Harvey Feng in the Sanguine series by Harper Lou. You have to love a cross-dressing, vegetarian vampire. Among the favourites, I also have to mention Jordan L. Hawk’s Hunter of Demons. I’ve only read the first in the SPECTR series but I so loved Gray.

I’m still missing a gay vampire snagging and managing to keep my attention, though. I miss desperately searching for the next book in a series. I miss not being able to put the book down until the dreaded ‘The End’ stares back at me.

Which vampire books should I read?

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

A Frost of Cares | A Ghost Story

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes all you want is a good ghost story, and A Frost of Cares is that. I’ve read about 70%, and I really like where Amy Rae Durreson is going.  A little while ago I read Spindrift * and I enjoyed it plenty, but this is better.

Usually, a story is told as if the MCs are unaware of there being a reader. Here you are addressed at times, and Luke (the narrator) talks to his husband through the text. I haven’t really made up my mind about what I think about it, if you’re a romantic you’ll probably think it’s a nice touch.

Luke is a military historian, which normally would have scared me off—I usually stay away from military dudes, I’m married to one that’s enough—but here it’s perfect. Just thinking about empty halls in old military buildings has me trembling.

In RL I’m a teacher and staying late at work always scare the crap out of me. Mind you, schools can be scary too. There is something about the dark study halls, the automatic light coming on as I walk by, my steps echoing in the empty corridors that send shivers down my spine. You never think of it during the days when there are students everywhere but once the dark creeps in and the rooms turn quiet *shudder*.

Anyway, A Frost of Cares is definitely the best purchase I’ve made this week, and if you like ghosts you should check it out!

books2read.com/AFrost *

Military historian Luke Alcott leaps at the chance to live in the seventeenth-century country mansion of Eelmoor Hall, home of the Royal Military School of Medicine, after being offered a job cataloging the school’s archives. Luke believes he chose the perfect place to start a new life and put his broken past behind him. But soon after settling into the old house, he hears strange noises—like footsteps—and he begins to suffer from terrible nightmares.

The only person Luke can turn to for help is the taciturn caretaker, Jay, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who carries an old battle wound. Together they try to understand Eelmoor Hall’s history and decipher what could be causing the haunting. As the weather grows colder and snow dusts the countryside, a child goes missing. Luke needs to deal with his own demons and learn to trust in love again if he hopes to face down the angry spirit and find the missing girl.

* By clicking the Books2Read link you’ll be taken to an external page. Links to Smashwords, Kobo U.S and Amazon contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.