this is really hard one, because there’s something in this book I just can’t get past. It’s made me realise that one of the reasons I love romance is that it doesn’t leave you wishing something were different.
This book did.
It’s the fourth book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, which I’ve been devouring. And it’s timely that I just wrote a post about the homoerotics of the series, because this is the thing that I can’t get past.
In the last book, the love between the brothers – and the way they physically express their love and loyalty – were an aspect I loved. It was an integral part of the love story at the core of the book.
In Lover Revealed she pushes the male/male relationship further – especially between the hero and his roommate (don’t let the word fool you, the guy’s a giant vampire warrior). For me, every truly tender, truly passionate part of this novel happened between those two men.
And the heroine just wasn’t enough to convince that our hero would turn his back on his roomie. So I just ended up resenting her.
And when the two males share an unbearably intimate embrace as part of a vampire ceremony, then part and “the parting was complete and irrevocable. A path that would not be walked. Ever.” it kind of broke my heart.
All kudos to Ward, that she could write the men’s relationship such that it developed with subtlety and longing, without ever being outright. But I think an author has to be so careful what longings they set up in their readers, if they’re not going to answer them.
So I am left with an achy kind of melancholy, which I suppose is not an entirely bad thing.