Saturday Update

So our Indian Summer is over. When from 30C with the humidex on Wednesday and to about 9C today. Brrrrr. Kind of gray and damp too. Oh well. No big plans for the weekend. Try and get laundry and some stuff done up as we leave Thursday morning for New York. Ack! It really snuck up on me. Looking forward to seeing Kris and the guys in New York though. Hopefully it will be nice weather. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Just Like Cats & Dogs by BA Tortuga (200 pages)
Torquere Press

This is a shifter story with a bit of a different feel. Sam is a cat shifter who was adopted by a wolf family. In fact they are a bit of an odd-ball family. His one older brother is blind, his older sister can't shift but things were particularly hard for Sam growing up. He was forced to be locked up during the moon shift because the other wolves in the pack would attack him. Growing up, Gus was Sam's best friend's older brother who delighted in making Sam's life hell. However when Sam comes home for his father's funeral, Gus is in for a surprise. Sam is now a very successful choreographer and he's not taking any crap. They happen to run into each other months later and the attraction is strong but cats and dogs can't be together so they move on, until they run into each other again and finally admit they are mates, however the cats in the city Sam lives in hate Sam because he smells like wolf and decide to make him pay. Gus manages to get him rescued and they need to work out where their life will go from there. What was different is the shifters still have many animal traits while in human form. Most shifters are completely human, but Sam would go nuts when Gus would scratch his lower back like a cat and Gus loved having his ears scratched and they made animal sounds, purred, etc. in human form. I liked seeing a more animalistic human. Also after Sam is attacked, he's injured very badly and there is no magical shifter healing, he's permanently damaged for life. No easy solutions. But while Gus started out as a total asshole, the way he treated Sam when he was injured and at the end made me fall totally in love with him. So for a little different look at shifters, it was a good read that I quite enjoyed.

Slow Bloom by Anah Crow & Dianne Fox (490 pages)
Torquere Press

I believe this story was originally a serial and should probably have tripped one of my major squick buttons, HUGE age gaps but it worked. Go figure. Ricky is 19 and looking after his reclusive neighbours yard for the summer. He's been crushing on 47 year old Jack and one day he ends up making a move. They spend the summer having sex but no strings. Jack has his own baggage as he used to be a dom who had things go badly when he couldn't take the pressure of keeping up the mask he felt he had to wear. He's now cautious. This story takes place over about a year and while Ricky goes back to University they continue to chat and see each other periodically, gradually growing closer. When Ricky comes home the next summer he finally confesses to his parents and his mother does NOT take it well, but his father is supportive. I thought his father was great. It's hard to summarize because its nearly 500 pages, but even though they often mention how old Jack is, it didn't bother me, maybe because I didn't feel even at the end that it was necessarily a forever thing, especial Jack knew that, maybe in 10 years they'd go their separate ways, who knows. I did find I was skimming the sex at the end so I could get to the plot part. I realize that there was a lot of sex because each month it was released there was probably a sex scene but when you string them all together it got a bit much. Ricky and Jack were hot and sexy and I loved how Jack would try things with Ricky he never did before and wanted to make him happy and how Ricky changed Jack's crabby ways. If you don't like sex with other people once they hook up this could be an issue as they are not exclusive that first year, but it fit with their relationship and I enjoyed it.