Aidee Ladnier

I received Wolf Around the Corner from the ‘Don’t Buy My Love’ program on Goodreads for an honest and unbiased review. The MCs in this book are Tom Davidson, an unsuccessful actor, and Frank Braden, a young writer who has Galen’s disease that causes lycanthropy. The story is told in third person from both Frank and Tom’s pov.



I’ve read a few books by this author before and I enjoyed them, like I did this one. The blurb gives a good description of the plot but I’ll give a short summary. Tom returns to his hometown when he gets a call from his sister, Annie, to help save her bookstore from being torn down to make room for more modern shops. Tom moved to New York to make it as an actor but hasn’t been successful. He also hasn’t been truthful about his failure, so when he returns home, people think he’s a success. Frank suffers from lycanthropy caused by a genetic curse placed on one of his ancestors. Tossed out of his home by his father and stepmother, Frank has settled in town and Annie gives him a job at the bookstore. Both Tom and Annie convince Frank to write a story that can be turned into a play to help save the bookshop. Tom will produce and direct.

I liked the characters Frank and Tom. The author conveyed the different personalities well, and the changes they both went through as the story progressed. The romance pace was slow, which some readers might not like. There was instant lust, but it wasn’t acted on immediately. I did however, have problems with how lycanthropy was explained. It’s stated that Galen’s Syndrome is a genetic curse, which puts this story into a Fantasy/Paranormal genre even though it feels ‘normal.’ The story mentions repeatedly that people who are cursed are not animals. Frank even states he has his own mind when he shifts. But, here’s where it gets confusing. Throughout the story, the wolf inside Frank is emphasized as a separate being with its own personality and desires/fears/wants. Frank doesn’t just shift, which to me would be the DNA genetic curse affecting just his body, he actually has a creature expressing emotions living in him, and something he needs to control. That’s not just DNA manipulation, that’s another entity entirely. It’s a wolf, and Frank becomes that wolf. That’s where this story didn’t work for me. It kept emphasizing that Frank wasn’t an animal, that he wasn’t a wolf. However, every time the wolf inside expressed emotions/desires or lost control, the story mentioned the wolf’s feelings. The story didn’t mention that the wolf ‘represented’ Frank’s feelings, it was a being itself. Frank as a wolf didn’t lose his human mind when shifted. Just like the wolf didn’t lose its wolf emotions when Frank was in human form. So sadly, this attempt to explain lycanthropy didn’t work for me. Frank is a wolf shapeshifter.

One other thing I definitely don’t like is the cover. I’m guessing the author didn’t have a say on the cover. I’m hoping at some point that she has a chance to get it redone because it’s bad and doesn’t convey the characters at all. We’re told that Tom is handsome and blond, possibly in his late twenties, so I’m guessing the person on the cover in the background is Tom. Frank has auburn hair and is about twenty-two years old! The man in the front looks wolfish, so I’m guessing that is supposed to be Frank. That model looks like he’s at least thirty-five to thirty-eight years old. Who chose the cover models? Because the Frank model is not representative of Frank in the least as described in the story. The author had Natasha Snow remake her Clockwork Kraken cover and it’s gorgeous. I hope the author considers redoing the cover for this book because it seriously needs reworking. Covers are rated in my book reviews even though I know covers don’t matter to some readers. For me, they matter a lot.

I enjoyed the relationship growth between Tom and Frank in Wolf Around the Corner, but the discrepancy between the story saying Frank wasn’t a wolf, but then creating a wolf that lived as a separate entity within Frank didn’t work for me. The cover also ruined it for me. I did however enjoy the plot and the pace. Therefore, I give this book, 4 Stars despite the two big issues I have with this story.

… (mere)

There are many reasons for time travel, or so fiction tells us, but the one in this novella is pretty unique and very romantic. Not that I can say any more about it without spoiling the story, but what is at the heat of the characters’ motivation in ‘The Applicant’ is very sweet. There is plenty of action and fun to be had as well, what with a robot teddy bear on a rampage, various people coming for job interviews, and more than one surprise for Forbes, who needs a research assistant, and Oliver, the time traveler who gets very involved in the selection.

Forbes is a brilliant roboticist. He has developed a robot teddy bear, except one small change has thrown it out of kilter and now he can’t stop its destructive rampage. On top of that he has a stranger on his doorstep who knows way more than he should about Forbes and his projects. Forbes is extremely attracted to the man who goes by the name of Oliver but he quickly figures out there is more to him than he first suspected.

Oliver has a very clear agenda – and yes, he took some time to have a quickie when the opportunity presented itself, but he is in love with the older Forbes and can’t resist the younger version. Once Oliver accomplished what he set out to do, he finds it surprisingly difficult to return to his own time. It doesn’t become clear until the last few pages of the book what the reasons are, but I could see where he was coming from.

Both versions of Forbes have their own charm, and turning his back on the younger one, knowing what they are both going to face when he does, is not easy for Oliver. It’s a love story that spans two separate points in time, weaves them both together, and produces some interesting results. Not your traditional interpretation of time travel and its potential pitfalls, but one I liked nevertheless. And really, who is to say this one isn’t “right”? It’s all fiction for us so far…

If you like experiments in time travel, if a genius roboticist lacking a sense of reality is your thing, and if you’re looking for an interesting love story of the futuristic kind with an unexpected twist at the end, then you will probably like this novella.


NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.… (mere)