Connor loves Paris and revels in his beautiful life in
the museums of the city and the streets of Le Marais – and he’s always ready to
take in waifs and strays who need shelter, good advice and a warm meal
But when these gay sex workers are targeted by a serial
killer, Connor’s not going to stand aside and if he catches the serial killer
they’ll find there’s another dangerous predator prowling the rooftops of Paris.
While Michel is an undercover cop, ideally placed to
infiltrate the killers victims – being a former sex worker himself. But can he
lure in the killer without falling into old, destructive habits?
Like many paranormal romances, I find myself a little
frustrated by the fact actually hunting down the serial killer takes a very big
back step to the romance. I don’t know how much Michel actually spends
investigating the murder at all… I mean other than walking the streets looking
sexy I can’t really point to anything Michel does to actually hunt down the
serial killer. Michel does little more than move in with Connor and then repeatedly fall asleep instead of doing his job and then destroying evidence. Connor does more, but even he gets heavily distracted.
I do actually like the romance, I think it has a lot of positive
elements, is nicely based, has reasonable conflicts and is generally something
I appreciate – but it’s hard to be that invested in it when there are men being
murdered and that’s pushed into the background.
I am somewhat bemused with the idea that the police are
under so much pressure from the powers that be to solve this case right now!
The dead are sex workers, homeless street walkers, gay men and, at least some
of them, immigrants, possibly undocumented. The powers that be being passionately
outraged about this does not match up with actual official reaction to the
deaths of any of these groups, let alone men who straddle all of them. I think
it would have been much better to focus on Judge d’Angers, a clearly deeply
involved woman (in what we don’t know yet) who could be driven by her own moral
code (or other motives we’re not yet privy to).
I really like Connor and Michel here – they’re fun
characters, they have hobbies, histories and depths. I like how they grow
together, I like how they come to realise more depth. I like how Michel relates
back to his previous life but is happy about how far he has come and is very
confident as to risk everything to prove himself. I like Connor, his life his
dedication to art, his existence, community and friends.
I like the unique wereanimal, some very original takes on
werecreatures in general and a really interesting take on the supernatural
depiction of the Council of Paris. I really really wish we could see more of
the supernatural here. The hints of the supernatural are too brief, Connor’s
history is too brief, his family too brief and what it means to be a
weresmilodon was all pretty abruptly passed over. Which is a shame because not
only did I want to see more of these unique elements, but I felt the supernatural
wasn’t as big a part of this book as I like
But I really did like to see Connor stalking the houses
of Paris. And how that isn’t quite as easy for a big cat as we often see
depicted
And we have a book with two gay characters who I actually
like and whose relationship doesn’t annoy me! This is wonderful and so beyond
rare. I can’t stress enough how very very very few books with gay male
protagonists I’ve read for Fangs and how many of them (or books submitted to us
we didn’t read) had Problems.
The problem is the focus. I mean, this book takes part in
the very gay-friendly neighbourhood of Marais (I’ve been, it’s AWESOME). And
most of the characters are gay. Which is great, definitely approving. The characters
are also not terrible, generally not troped in MOST ways. There’s a lot of good
here. It’s certainly a lot lot lot better than nearly every book with a gay male
protagonist we’ve
reviewed on this site.
And they’re all sex workers. Oh, one of them runs a club that caters to sex-workers and offers them freebies so long as the elderly owner can get him some under-aged groping and the other, our co-protagonist is guy-with-heart-of-gold who likes to save sex-workers (and the reason you don’t have many romantic relationships Connor is because you don’t seem to have any gay men in your life you don’t view paternalistically as some poor wounded flower for you to save!)
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have sex-workers or gay
sex-workers in a book – by all means do, this men exist and are rarely depicted
(outside of porn) – but when your gay romance book with nearly all gay
characters (with occasional female gossip hangers on and straight colleagues)
taking place in one of the gay capitals of France and the only gay culture and
gay men we see are sex-worker related? There’s no counter narrative or even parallel
narrative. This continues when we look at Michel – an undercover police officer
who can’t even attend a professional meeting with his boss without wearing
trousers so tight you can tell whether he’s circumcised. I nearly put the book
down when he finds evidence and promptly ruins it by masturbating over it. Yes,
evidence is inadmissible because the cop finding it couldn’t resist ejaculating
all over a blood stained shirt in a serial killer enquiry. I honesly have no idea how to even respond to this?! Yes there’s an
attempt to present Michel struggling with his past and demons… but really?
Really? We need to make the gay men THIS sexualised and THIS sex obsessed? Throw in Connor’s slut shaming and paternalism and the positive array
of vulnerable, exploited damaged gay prostitutes and this… focus is a pretty
unpleasant lens
Which is a shame because I like these characters. I like
how they grow. I like their romance. I like how Michel battles with some of his
old demons and grows to appreciate himself, his life and Connor more. Similarly
I like how Connor deals with his issues relating to Michel, his own
relationship issues as well as the revelations around Michel and how this
affects their relationship. In so many books this would lead to some really
ridiculous conflict forced however they can but instead there was a decent
level of maturity in handling it.
Connor is a mixed race Man of Colour, with Latino and
Native American ancestry. One of the major characters who is Michel’s chief
contact in the police is Said, a man of Asian descent. All do reference their
culture and ancestry though I suspect Connor’s is going to be used as a way of
referencing his woo-woo. There's also a bit of a weird moment where we have an elderly racist woman making an exception for Connor as one of the good ones and... why is this here? He doesn't even call her out or think bad things about it? We didn’t have much real presence of women – we had
women there and their brief appearances were all interesting but also really
brief. I already mentioned Judge d’Angers who is clearly dedicated and involved
– but also brief. Connor has a couple of female friends who may be interesting –
but again it’s a really brief appearance
There are some good parts to this book – we have
an interesting supernatural world with some definite high potential which
really needs exploring and instead i just far too igniored. We have some really good central characters- but the
general focus on gay men in this book needs to widen really really badly to provide some counter narrative to the excessively-sexualised, broken and vulnerable narrative here. And both character's seeming indifference to the actual murder is just horrendous. The
romance is interesting but completely eclipses the plot and the world building to the extent that they could actually be removed entirely - AND Connor's supernatural nature - and not unduly change the trajectory of the book. In the end the romance and these characters would work - but they've been stuffed into a world (both supernatural and real) and a plot line that is poorly shown and too often ignored. And I'm torn - I've changed this rating between 2 to 2.5 and then 1.5 and back again 4 times... and I'm still not happy. This could have been so good... and I think my 2.5 is rating on what it could be and ignoring the tropes, the terrible incompetence and completely ignoring the storyline
