Author: ⟫ April Kelley
Blurb: ⟫ Morgan never thought being a vampire was a bad thing until he finds out the dragon shifters, who are the most prejudiced, are his fated mate’s family.Morgan’s life changed the day he was kidnapped and held captive. Even weeks after the rescue, he’s still mentally processing all that has happened. Wingspan might seem like a safe place, but he’s nursed a few of the local bigots, so he knows looks can be deceiving. And then he meets his Fated mate. Seamus seems too good to be true. A sexy, protective dragon shifter who can bake and smiles all the time. What’s not to love. Despite the chemistry between them, Morgan finds it difficult to let others in, even his mate. Can he let Seamus be his safe haven?
Review: ⟫ To be fair to this novella, it started at a disadvantage as I haven’t read any of the previous stories. I was hoping that that wouldn’t be an issue, but it quickly became clear that not knowing a lot of the backstory meant that I felt like I dropped into the middle of a story – or perhaps a short tangent.
None of the characters felt particularly fleshed out. I found it difficult to connect with any of them, especially as a lot of names seemed to be thrown out that I didn’t recognise and didn’t realise the importance of.
Morgan himself was hard to get a grasp on. He had obviously been through a traumatic event, but there were no real details given so it was just – words. There was no real impact to them. And the fact that he was a vampire seemed incidental – we didn’t see him feeding (apart from on his mate), there seemed to be no perks to it, and I just felt very distant from the whole thing.
Even meeting Sean didn’t change things. The insta-attraction/love was just that – instant, with no background, no building up to, nothing. He literally walked into the place, smelled Sean and that was it. The battle with Sean’s family was a complete non-event – I expected there to be some kind of confrontation but it just fizzled out, with no contact with the prejudiced members of the dragon family apart from an initial meeting. And the title and allusion to Christmas cookies was such a minor detail that I wish they hadn’t used it as the title – it made little to no sense to me.
The background characters were obviously meant to be a call-back to previous books, which I imagine would be nice for people who have read the previous books. I also think it was meant to titillate interest in their stories so that perhaps you would dive into the rest of the series. Unfortunately, they didn’t grab me enough to make me do that.
The writing was solid but I didn’t feel engaged and after reading, I didn’t get any sense of satisfaction from the ending, their HEA or anything like that. I think that perhaps a lot of this is my fault for not reading the previous books and that maybe my experience would have been better for it.
3/5 from me – if you’ve read the previous books, you might find the book more engaging.
I received an ARC from GRR.
