Diverse Reader: Random Review: Phoenix's Challenge by Sunny Day #Review #Giveaway

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Random Review: Phoenix's Challenge by Sunny Day #Review #Giveaway

Author: Sunny Day
Book: Phoenix's Challenge
Publisher: Siren Publishing
Publication Date: June 29, 2017
Length: 116 pages

Reviewed by Morningstar

Synopsis

Having grown up in pack that frowned on gay relationships, Blaine makes a deal with himself: one night and one night only. If he finds a man he's interested in, he'll sleep with him. That should have been the end of it, except the man he met was Phoenix, and all Blaine's carefully constructed plans went out the window.

Blaine can't stop thinking about Phoenix. Despite everything, he wants to see Phoenix again. What he doesn't want is for his life to get so complicated. Phoenix becomes his only way out.

Face to face with Phoenix, and trapped in a dangerous situation, Blaine makes the only decision he can: he has to trust Phoenix to back him up. But the attraction between them is as strong as it was during their first explosive encounter, and Blaine finds himself unwilling to resist.

But why should he? It's Phoenix.

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Giveaway

As much as I was excited to read this book there was too many times I felt disconnected from the story and its characters. I loved Blaine and the author gave us plenty of “on screen time” to get to know him. Phoenix, on other hand, I never felt all that connected to him. Most of his scenes were about the pack business while most of Blaine’s were mostly about his feelings toward Phoenix and taking blame for a lot of the issue that arose in the mingling of the packs.

The writing itself was good just with the lack of togetherness from the main characters which lead to feeling disconnected from them and not seeing the “love” connection between these two guys. There was a chemistry that the author was able to show the few times they were together sexually but the deeper ‘I want to be with you forever’ chemistry wasn’t built up enough to make me believe it.

There were times during conversations that I felt lost in the dialogue, like the characters knew something I wasn’t privy too, mainly due to the lack of true history about the now rival packs. And that might be because at times I was confused as to who was from which pack which made a difference in understanding emotions and so on. There were a couple of holes in the story as well. Nothing major but small ones count if they are noticed. One last thing is the plot points, both story and character, were all resolved but in a very anti-climatic and low tone way which for me took away from the importance of them.

Overall. Blaine was what kept me going back. My hope for him in finally being true to himself and going after what he wanted was what kept me glued to the story.