Tami Lund, $0.99, ISBN 978-1005476700
Fantasy Romance, 2020

The title of Tami Lund’s Benjamin refers to Benjamin Martinez, who is naturally a werewolf.

You know, this has me thinking. Given how so many heroes are werewolves these days, how come the blokes on the covers are always some pretty boy without a shirt or any hair aside from those on his head?

I’d think the appeal of a werewolf bloke lies in the hair, the canine snout, the pointed ears, and what not, so how come the covers rarely feature something like, say, Blaidd from the Elden Ring game or other male furry icons?

It’s sad, really, how the feral and deadly creatures of folklore and myth are reduced in the romance genre into a marketing buzzword for “instant lust”. In fact, these so-called werewolf heroes rarely, if even ever, change into their wolf forms, and when they do, it’s during moments that won’t interrupt the “sexy” fantasy of the hero not acting like a werewolf.

Anyway, the Story. Ben has, for the last five years, been undercover, posing as a member of Vape’s rogue wolf pack under the orders of his own alpha.

The point of the whole gig is to get Vape to move his rogues far away from Dark Moon Falls, so if you ask me, Ben clearly isn’t doing a good job as it has been five years and counting. Also, I don’t see how the whole matter can’t be sorted out in other ways, like perhaps a brawl of hairy manly wolf-men for everyone’s entertainment.

Meanwhile, Hannah Montgomery has fled her pack, although I’m not sure why she isn’t considered rogue as a result, and naturally, she also wants to avenge her brother’s death, conveniently at the hands of Vape. Sure, she is way out of her depths here, but it doesn’t matter, as the big strong man she is sleeping with will carry the heavy lifting and save her ass, so whatever, really.

Anyway, our hero meets her while trying to figure out how to tell his boss that Vape is planning to attack the good guys—I suppose a text message is out of the question—and then he tells Hannah his real name.

The author has the hero going oopsie about this, but here’s the thing: telling me that a character is an idiot doesn’t change the fact that the character is an idiot. Ben could have blown his cover that he has kept for five years in such an amateur hour way, and yet he’s also supposed to be the best, most capable, yadda yadda yadda.

The author keeps telling me that Ben is wondering why he is an idiot as he proceeds to make even more rookie mistakes, which is just… anyway, let me just say that the answer to the burning question of “I know I am Writing Stupid Things in my story, but hey, at least I know I’m writing stupid things so that counts.. right?” is a big flat, fat no. I paid money for a fun story, not for the author’s confession of her sins.

Also, I know this story is definitely set in an alternate Earth because of lines like this.

Hannah had visited enough Walmarts in her lifetime to have a preconceived notion of what to expect as she hurried toward her friend. Two men in ski masks, pushing a grocery cart, was not it.

Please, I’ve seen that website of weirder people in Walmart. Two men in ski masks would be positively normal compared to what I have seen, so the author can stop trying to feed me fibs.

Yep, the masked duo was doing exactly what she feared: heading toward the registers, knocking everything in their path out of the way with a complete disregard for whether it was a living thing.

I know, right? Why can’t these robbers be more considerate? Is it so hard to stand in line and wait for their turn to reach the register like any well-mannered robber would?

They’d somehow loaded all of their goods into canvas bags with handles, which were swinging from their hands as they made for the exits as if they had every right to be here and leave without paying for their selections.

I can see the heroine scowling at the backs of these robbers before snarling a “HOW. DARE. YOU!” like she’s Greta on a blender.

Oh, and one of them winks at her, which is how she knows that her horrible, horrible ex-boyfriend is in town. He is, just as conveniently as Vape killing her brother, part of the bad guy gang.

Actually, as far as she knows, Ben is also part of the bad guy gang, but whatever, he’s hot and the designated hero of this story, so she isn’t too beat up about having slept with him before realizing that.

That’s the problem with this story. Sure, there’s plenty of action, but everything is cobbled together in a “let’s just pull amazing things out of the author’s rear end” manner. So many things fall into place because of coincidences, both magic and technology either exist or don’t depending on plot requirement, the bad guy is made to be so stupid that I have no longer how he lasted that long as the boss of the bad guys, and our hero comes off as a terrible liar and actor that I also have no idea how long he could last playing undercover rogue for five years.

The author’s way with her narrative and conversations makes this one an easy read, but it’s definitely not an easy read what with the plot and its execution being the pits. The frequently weird and outlandish observations about people from the heroine also don’t help matters, as they make this story feel even more of an ass pull than anything else.

Wait, wait—I just have a thought. With the bad guy named Vape and the heroine screeching at the reader at one point that Vape needs to be stopped before he lures more impressionable were-whatevers into his clutches, this whole thing is just propaganda to tell people to stop vaping, right?

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