Gifted to the Wolves

ROMANTIC EROTICA

Title: Gifted to the Wolves
Author: Amira Rain
Publication date: 04/17/2016
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 1 out of 5

Amazon Blurb:
Jayme Adler has just discovered she is one of the GIFTED.

She is one of the few humans on the planet to be blessed with the gift of supernatural powers but before she has time to work out what is going on she finds herself in government custody.

They want her to use her gift for their gain. They assign her the task of infiltrating a wolf-pack owned by Alpha Wolves Cameron and Elliot.

In order to get the information that the government needs she is required to get close to them. 

As close as possible. 

But in order for Jayme to win the trust of the two men she is going to have to get a lot closer to them than she ever imagined and enter into a relationship that was beyond her wildest fantasies…

My Review
Try some paranormal erotica, my Goodreads friends told me. We swear, it’s not all icky and weird, they said.

So, armed with these assertions, I scanned the Amazon bestseller list, picked out a paranormal erotica novel that had good reviews and was selling like Girl Scout cookies outside a Weight Watchers meeting, and away I went. I was hopeful. Hopeful that I’d find the reader’s Holy Grail: an entirely new genre, packed with books just waiting for me to download. (Imagine me tenting my fingers like Mr. Burns and saying, “Excellent.”)

Well, I can tell you this, people: hope is a dark, dangerous thing. It leads you to do stupid crap. Stupid crap like reading this book and giving up 3 hours of my life to do it.

I’ll never get those hours back, people. Never.

Where to start. (Takes a deep breath)

First of all, I’m willing to suspend a good bit of disbelief when it comes to paranormal stories. I’m willing to accept the existence of vampires and werewolves and magic when I’m reading. What I’m not willing to accept are dumbass heroines doing dumbass things for dumbass reasons. Here’s the list (because my problems with this book are too extensive to write in paragraph form. It’d take me all day to get through it, and this book doesn’t deserve that much time):

• Our intrepid heroine, a mild-mannered gal with a typical, boring day job, finds out she has superpowers and is about to be drafted into the government’s war on shifter terrorism. Her reaction? Well, she basically shrugs and says, sure, go ahead and completely uproot my life because I’m happy to serve my country. Um...really? That is so far from a normal reaction that I’m already wondering (at 9% into the book) if there’s something wrong with this girl. Like, mentally wrong.
• The heroine’s government handler informs her that to serve her country, she must infiltrate the two alpha wolves’ inner sanctum and determine which of them is a traitor. The plan? Well, convince them to have a three-way with her, of course! Duh. You read that right, folks. The fate of the nation hangs in the balance of our heroine’s sexcapades. Further, the handler informs her that any other woman would die for the opportunity to bang the heroes because they’re super hot. After all, who wouldn’t want to be whored out to hot guys by the US government? (And BTW, if these dudes were fat and ugly, this wouldn’t be an erotic fantasy, it’d be an episode of Criminal Minds. )
• Words like “feminine mound” and “pole” are littered throughout the sex scenes. (We’re all grown ups. If you mean vagina and penis, go ahead and say it.)
• The dialogue is so stilted it’s laughable. At one point, the hero says, “I’m not the ever-strong shifter you might think of me as. I’m a damaged man, Jayme. I’m a man with a past that has made me not want to let anyone else into my heart ever again.” Dear God,  who talks like that? He went on to explain (for WAY too many pages) everything bad that ever happened to him in his life. Snore.  
• If the bad guy hadn’t been so kind as to explain all his villainous deeds—in great detail—to our heroine, she’d still be in the dark. (BTW: I knew who the bad guy was the moment he was introduced. It was that obvious.)
• I started skimming about halfway through so I can’t be sure, but the subtitle on this book said it was a pregnancy story. I must have missed that, because the heroine isn’t pregnant and doesn’t get pregnant in the story.
• Where did the heroine’s powers come from? Why are the gifted folks all willing to fight for their country so readily when the only consequence of saying no is a prison sentence? Doesn’t that violate civil rights? Are there really any prisons that could hold people with superpowers? Why does this pack have 2 alphas? I thought the whole point of an alpha was that could only be one, much like the Highlander. What was with all the talk of her past relationship and how he cheated on her when that info didn’t really impact the plot in any way? The answers to these questions: I dunno. None of these things were addressed.

I could go on but won’t. What’s the point?

Long-story-short, I feel like the author owes me money, as do all the people who left good reviews for this book on Amazon. I would accept payment in cash, chocolate and/or doughnuts.

If any of you feel like I should give shifter erotica another try, feel free to leave some recommendations in the comments section. I’ll try to keep an open mind. Have doughnuts ready, though, just in case.
     
Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
This is the Charlie Sheen of books. No amount of rehab will help it. Save yourselves! It’s too late for me...

Other reading suggestions
It’s on the darker side, and it doesn’t involve shifters, but for well-written menage with an actual storyline, try Kylie Scott’s Flesh.  

Note: Review original posted on Knockin’ Books.

---