This review was written by: C
Received: Library
Stars: 2.75/5
Official Summary:
As a young gay man—and a werepanther—all Jin Rayne yearns for is a normal life. Having fled his past, he wants nothing more than to start over, but Jin’s old life doesn’t want to let him go. When his travels bring him to a new city, he crosses paths with the leader of the local were-tribe.
Logan Church is a shock and an enigma, and Jin fears that Logan is both the mate he fears and the love of his life. Jin doesn't want to go back to the old ways, and mating would irrevocably tie him to them. But Jin is the mate Logan needs at his side to help him lead his tribe, and he won't give Jin up so easily. It will take time and trust for Jin to discover the joy in belonging to Logan and how to love without restraint.
My Thoughts:
Okay, so I have quite the list as to why I decided to start this series:
1) I'm trying to venture into new genres so I decided to try the more "hardcore" male / male romance scene.
2) One of my sisters is constantly telling me to delve into the omegaverse and werecat genres, so I guess I got the werecat part down.
3) I may dabble a little bit in the yaoi genre (okay a lot), and the characters and werecat idea seemed a bit similar to Shingo (a black werecat) and Kakami (a werejaguar) from Kuroneko Kareshi. I don't know about you, but Shingo and Jin definitely have a similar character design (they're the black-haired beauties below), so I thought I should give this a shot.
4) Everyone needs a guilty pleasure, so I figured why not let a little smutty romance be mine?
Anyway, when I started the book, I felt that it had potential. A hidden werecat world filled with smoldering men? I'm in, no questions asked. I definitely fell into the world with Calmes' great description of the werecat transformations -- they were flawless and definitely made it possible for me as the reader to see and feel exactly what was happening:
On a side note -- does anyone else think that Jin's butt on the cover kind of resembles a peach? Maybe it was purposeful?
"The scream reached me, and I listened for a second to make sure I knew where I was going before I took off running. It was like being shot from a gun, the burst of speed before my vision changed and my focus lowered. I went from being blind in the dark to having perfect sight in a heartbeat....my body discarded one shape for another too quickly for my brain to register. One moment I was a man, and the next I was a panther. "
That previous bit of writing truly drew me in. Plus, there was an interesting plot. You see, Jin is a reah -- which means an individual who is a true-mate of a semel (a tribe leader). However, there's never been a male reah before. Consequently, Jin's family and/or tribe rejected him for being an abnormality, but also mostly due to his sexuality and viewing him as a sin against nature.
In this world, reahs are rare -- semels almost never find the true-mate that they're destined for -- they often have to settle for a yareah (someone who's chosen to be the mate of a semel so they aren't a true-mate).
Due to Jin being rejected and almost murdered by his tribe, he's more of a wandering soul, going from place to place living life with his best friend Crane. However, in the current area where they reside, the tribes nearest to them catch wind of what Jin is and request that he meets their semels in order to determine whether or not he's a true-mate of any one of them.
Before I go any further, I should let you know that I really don't mind the "one true love in the universe" type of deal where one person is destined to be with another by some weird laws of fate. I'm a bit of a romantic, so I guess I've always hoped this is true in reality. However, there were a few things about how the trope was used that annoyed me, which I'll get into later.
Anyway, it becomes clear that Jin is destined to be with Logan Church. Once this happens a bunch of drama enters their world and their lives are put in danger.
About a fourth to halfway through the book, it began to fall apart -- at least for me. The writing seemed a bit plain, things moved super quickly, and there were quite a few other factors that got in the way of me loving this book. Here are specifics for why Change of Heart didn't work for me:
1) The words ''baby" and "mate" were used SO MUCH.
I've read my fair share of adult and YA romances and the word "baby" is rarely (if used even at all) as a term of endearment. It might just be me, but reading it sounds a lot weirder than hearing someone use the word in real life. Maybe "babe" would sound more natural if I were reading? I don't know, but I just felt that I could create a Justin Bieber song with all the repetition.
I know that this is a werecat book with fated pairings, so it would make sense to call your betrothed your mate, but it just sounded a bit weird and out of place. Plus it was used A LOT. Maybe I would have just preferred to imagine them saying each others names in a super-sexy way in place of "baby" or "mate?"
2) Specific and made-up language memorization is ESSENTIAL.
I've come across books before that have a made-up language or very specific made-up words that are used often. Thus, you have to memorize what they all mean in order to get a sense of character relationships or what the heck is going on. I just find it a bit annoying to have to read and memorize an index before starting a book to make sure it's possible to get a gist of what's going on.
3) The plot moved SUPER FAST and began to fall apart.
I know that a lot of these books are relatively short, and due to the petite length, I feel like the author tried to fit a lot of events in a very short amount of time. As a result, too much happened too quickly. Others may feel like the plot had a decent pace, but it just seemed overly fast to me.
Additionally, I feel like due to the jumble of events, the plot fell apart as time went on - there was less substance and more frenzy.
4) The sex scenes were there pretty much to just have sex scenes.
I really don't mind sex scenes that aren't there to further the plot (I would say that about two actually further the story). Besides, some yaoi are filled with sex scenes that don't further the plot. Regarding Change of Heart, I'm going to admit that the hot and heavy scenes were....for a lack of better description ... pretty sexy. For the vast majority of these scenarios, this was me when I came upon them:
However, it does get a bit annoying when the sex is pretty much just a device to get the reader to keep moving through the book. It's almost as if the author thought "How do I fill the gap between these two scenes? Hmmm....I'll just throw in more sex!!!"
5) Is Logan gay, bisexual, or straight???
I was kind of confused when Logan went from dating and sleeping with girls to suddenly being like "You're my reah and you're a guy. So I guess it doesn't matter what my sexuality is. I'm just gonna go with it." It just felt like he'd suddenly "become" gay and/or bisexual. I'm of the mindset that people don't "become" gay, straight, or bisexual. They're born with whatever sexual orientation that they are -- it's not a decision, it's a part of you. Maybe the author didn't mean to come across as Logan "becoming" gay and/or bisexual (because I'm still confused as to whether or not he's strictly into guys or guys and girls), or maybe it'll be brought up in another book in the series that Logan was really bisexual or gay, but it felt a bit wrong for him to act like he'd suddenly turned gay.
Jin even had a very abrupt conversation with Logan, explaining that he either is or isn't gay. However, Logan just brushed it off. All he explained was that he'd only been with girls but since his reah is a man, he's going to love Jin. I get the sentiment and maybe I missed an undertone or something in the book showing that Logan was gay or bisexual all along (maybe he wasn't able to face his sexual orientation until Jin?), but it was kind of a deal breaker.
6) Jin doesn't want to fall in love. Then he does and throws out all previous beliefs on the matter.
I kind of hate when characters have such strong and passionate beliefs on a subject and then they do a total 360 with no explanation. It's kind of a WTF moment. What happened to the fact that Jin had no intention of finding his mate and wanted to avoid all semels in the area no matter the cost? It makes absolutely no sense that years of one mindset are suddenly overturned by one moment in his life. It just irks the hell out of me.
7) Super possessive love interest.
Another pet peeve of mine is when one person in a relationship acts like they own the other. In a nutshell, that's Logan Church. He's super possessive and I got exhausted with his exclamations that Jin is his.
Maybe I'm in the minority -- but I hate relationships where people act as if their partner is a possession, something that they attained and now own. Jin is a human being, not human doll.
This also ties into #6 where Jin's all "Yes, I'm yours. Take me!!!". I just couldn't take it.
8) Why is the submissive always tinier and more slender???
This is a trope that really gets to me. Why does the submissive always have to look more feminine??? I really don't get it.
Well, that's pretty much all I have left to say. I don't want anyone to not try this book because of #5. Sometimes I just read too far into things. Besides, I definitely plan on continuing with this series. It's intriguing, and I'll get past my complaints because I want to know what the future holds for Jin and Logan -- maybe my complaints will be rectified?
I was kind of confused when Logan went from dating and sleeping with girls to suddenly being like "You're my reah and you're a guy. So I guess it doesn't matter what my sexuality is. I'm just gonna go with it." It just felt like he'd suddenly "become" gay and/or bisexual. I'm of the mindset that people don't "become" gay, straight, or bisexual. They're born with whatever sexual orientation that they are -- it's not a decision, it's a part of you. Maybe the author didn't mean to come across as Logan "becoming" gay and/or bisexual (because I'm still confused as to whether or not he's strictly into guys or guys and girls), or maybe it'll be brought up in another book in the series that Logan was really bisexual or gay, but it felt a bit wrong for him to act like he'd suddenly turned gay.
Jin even had a very abrupt conversation with Logan, explaining that he either is or isn't gay. However, Logan just brushed it off. All he explained was that he'd only been with girls but since his reah is a man, he's going to love Jin. I get the sentiment and maybe I missed an undertone or something in the book showing that Logan was gay or bisexual all along (maybe he wasn't able to face his sexual orientation until Jin?), but it was kind of a deal breaker.
6) Jin doesn't want to fall in love. Then he does and throws out all previous beliefs on the matter.
I kind of hate when characters have such strong and passionate beliefs on a subject and then they do a total 360 with no explanation. It's kind of a WTF moment. What happened to the fact that Jin had no intention of finding his mate and wanted to avoid all semels in the area no matter the cost? It makes absolutely no sense that years of one mindset are suddenly overturned by one moment in his life. It just irks the hell out of me.
7) Super possessive love interest.
Another pet peeve of mine is when one person in a relationship acts like they own the other. In a nutshell, that's Logan Church. He's super possessive and I got exhausted with his exclamations that Jin is his.
Maybe I'm in the minority -- but I hate relationships where people act as if their partner is a possession, something that they attained and now own. Jin is a human being, not human doll.
This also ties into #6 where Jin's all "Yes, I'm yours. Take me!!!". I just couldn't take it.
8) Why is the submissive always tinier and more slender???
This is a trope that really gets to me. Why does the submissive always have to look more feminine??? I really don't get it.
Well, that's pretty much all I have left to say. I don't want anyone to not try this book because of #5. Sometimes I just read too far into things. Besides, I definitely plan on continuing with this series. It's intriguing, and I'll get past my complaints because I want to know what the future holds for Jin and Logan -- maybe my complaints will be rectified?
On a side note -- does anyone else think that Jin's butt on the cover kind of resembles a peach? Maybe it was purposeful?
Jin vs Peach:
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