The Midnight Hunt (Midnight Hunters Series) by L. L. Raand (Radclyffe pseudonym) is my first not-so-enthusiastic review. This is Radclyffe's first foray into the paranormal and it's obvious. The world is pretty much stereotypical paranormal (or what a writer with limited experience with the genre assumes is paranormal -- nothing new except for the LGBT angle) with no surprises (werewolves, vampires, etc at war with each other and living alongside humans). Worse, the werewolf culture is as heteronormative and hierarchical as any het paranormal romance on the market (wolf researchers have pretty much trashed the whole 'alpha wolf' concept, but it lives on in werewolf lore).
Despite the paranormal setting, the characters are 'classic' Radclyffe: the tortured butch with a gentle soul but deep and mysterious scars that keep her from giving her heart to the supportive, competent, professional femme. This could have been an engaging paranormal story about werewolves, but its really a romance with a very thin 'plot' on top that mainly revolves around the romance anyway as our Alpha werewolf (the tender butch, of course -- wouldn't it have been interesting if the 'alpha' was the femme?) searches for her one true mate. And worse, it doesn't really offer an ending, but sort of a stopping place. I'm assuming that this is to entice us to buy the second book in the trilogy, but Raand's handling of the story and its non-ending doesn't exactly give me confidence that the next book will actually offer anything in the way of conclusion and/or a more engaging, imaginative story. I was disappointed in this book and won't be buying the next in the series.
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