Read Paranormal Fantasies here!
Content Warning: Stepsiblings, Threesomes, Nonhuman, Anal, Oral, A-to-V
The book starts off with what I believe to be the worst story I have read in it thus far. It's title is absolutely laughable, Pack Pals in Treeing Some Cooch by Annabel Bastione. It tells the short tale of two werewolf stepbrothers (so no one can say it's incest, I suppose?) who are trying to travel through the dangerous forest where they encounter a friendly/not friendly/friendly driad. Listen, I don't know the best way to write a review for this. It's incredibly short, and incredibly bad. We aren't even made aware that the main character is male until several pages in (or 4%, as my Goodreads notes tell me). Let me just abridge the story and discuss my notes-- that's really the only way I think I can make this interesting (to write AND read). My first note touches on the sort of language this story uses the entire way through: "We were still in control of ourselves, unlike our feral cousins that have lost all reason, hiding in the wild and only transforming during a full moon. Like I said, they have lost control." That statement, besides its repetitive nature, actually brings up several questions: if your feral cousins only transform during a full moon (where the protagonist and his stepbrother do so whenever they choose), doesn't that mean they are usually human? Do they become hermits who live in the forest only waiting for each transformation? Are they aware of themselves as a human, or do they think they're feral even in their human form? What does a feral werewolf look like if it's a human 90% of the time? These two sentences set us up for the rest of the story. Occasional awkward exposition, and nothing to back or explain it. We just move on as if we're supposed to know-- or perhaps infer-- what the author is trying to tell us. It's distracting and quickly takes you "out of the scene." There are less offensive moments of this, such as the protagonist lamenting on on his father being a werewolf hunter before death, and the irony of the situation. It's laughed off in a manner that I believe was supposed to be joking or resentful, but it comes off more as "Haha my dad died ironically," with no real emotion behind it. Is he mourning? Did he hate what his father did? Why is he so dismissive?! Then there's my favorite line: "Apart from our entire environment, there was nothing strange about the place." I won't lie, I'm pretty sure I understand what was meant here. That the area was weird looking, but besides that, there was nothing overtly dangerous or jarring about it. However, the way the line was delivered was so utterly awkward that I had to re-read it several times to be certain I'd read it correctly. It may be another attempt at humor, and I admit fault there (being autistic makes it tough to read intent through text), but as an avid reader, I felt this line really was just weirdly delivered. So the duo of (step)brothers go into the woods and find a poison place! It's not really well described, I believe it was meant to be a clearing with vines in it, where they both suddenly collapse because of the poison gas. Then the vines start fucking them! Protagonist has a little "I thought I was straight but hey this is pretty nice" moment with the vines (there's no aphrodisiac at this point, nor lube, so it felt really weird for both brothers to be enjoying this in any capacity-- but hey, maybe werewolves are self-lubricating!), then the driad Lillian appears! She tells them to leave her forest and never return... then proceeds to keep fucking them for a while. Some of it is written off as "Oh, she's giving us the antidote to the poison," but she does this before keeping them to fuck longer, and before telling them to leave. So basically "get out" and then preventing them from doing so. Eventually they do get to leave and oh no! They still have to get through the forest and the full moon is coming, so now is the best time to do it! Plus they both want to bang Lillian, like, for real this time, so the two brothers head back off into the forest. It's at this point I should mention I only realized our protagonist was male during the aforementioned sex scene, as up until that point I either managed to not notice any pronouns, or we straight up weren't told/were meant to assume. Oh, and I have no idea what era this is taking place in. They talk about being in a tavern with ale or mead or something, but immediately after the stepbrother (Stefan) says "Yuppers" so it's really anyone's guess. Protag and Stefan shift and go back into the woods, and Lillian is... really chill, apparently. She's kind of miffed that they came back, but immediately agrees to help them get through the very dangerous man-eating-plant side of the forest by fucking them full of her sap. They get to it, and the writing is... okay. I had a tough time discerning what positions everyone was in at any given point, but it got surprisingly kinky from this point on. There was anal, ass eating, truffle butter, lots of vines-- but of course they shifted back into humans for the whole thing, so no knots or wolf antics (almost as if the rest was meant to make up for that? But I'm probably projecting). OH! Around this time, it's mentioned that the full moon increases Stefan's power more than protags... and we're not told why. Is he more werewolf than his stepbrother? Is he like, werewolf by blood, while protag is werewolf by turning? Protag (have I mentioned I have no idea what his name is?) says a lot of stuff to himself that I feel like we're already supposed to understand, but don't. There's some more "Ew how could I be so perverted that I like taking it up the ass?" which honestly just comes off as rude and homophobic, considering Stefan is bi (or gay or something) and protag knows this, and the idea that anal is some secret evil sex act is just... boring. Anal isn't even that kinky! Straight people do that shit all the time. I'm genuinely running out of things to say about this clusterfuck (literally!). So here's some more of my notes: "I reached down to give her clit a tickle." Coochie-coo! "I may be a pervert, but my deviant mind is nothing compared to his," oh my god, My Secret Garden has more progressive language than this. It's pretty heavy-handed on the "gay sex is perverse" and I hate it so much. It's not even gay sex, they're fucking a woman! And that's... actually the last couple of notes I had. Nothing else remarkable happened, except that the author had an excerpt (similarly written) talking about "Pack Pals in:" being a tangentially-related series of stories. This was remarkably bad. Not the worst thing I've ever read, mind you, but definitely something I expect to see as a self-fulfillment fantasy on deviantArt (writing quality and all) or Wattpad, which makes reading it on my kindle very jarring. Not that every book has to be a winner, or that every story has to please me specifically-- but its similarity to high school story projects was incredibly glaring. I'm glad the author is writing and I hope they keep writing, but I'm very thankful I didn't have to pay for this. I might read some of their newer work if any is out (and it's free), but I certainly hope they've learned a lot from their experience writing Pack Pals and the reviews I'm sure they got (I hope none were outright nasty or mean, as that is far from my intent here!). If you want to research Annabel Bastione on your own, or check out any of her works, you can find her Goodreads profile, Amazon, Twitter, and her website by following these links!
This is a solid one out of five lemons, for anyone wondering.
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