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A review by kblincoln
Jack of Thorns by A.K. Faulkner, Amelia Faulkner
4.0
3.5 stars actually.
I confess, I was drawn into the YA/NA look of this rebranded cover (I checked out the prior cover as well and felt that the old cover actually promised what the book contained, unlike the new one). I think it set up expectations about the kind of story within that the book did not deliver, and that may partially be what didn't work for me personally. The new cover promises a YA/NA book with main characters on an emotional journey discovering their powers and growing in a romantic relationship.
Instead, what I feel we got was a cozy paranormal m/m demisexual story in some vague corner of San Diego where paparazzi follows famous people around and pagan gods are worshipped. In other words, a perfectly wonderful paranormal m/m story but not what I was looking for.
Laurence is a drug-addicted florist. Quentin is a British noble on the run from his father (although with the extent that the paparazzi follow him around and he is featured in the news, it seems really hard for me to suspend my disbelief his father doesn't know where he is) laying low in San Diego. They meet, and are drawn to each other, just as Laurence calls down a pagan god to his mother's floral shop.
Laurence is intensely sexual, but all of a sudden that changes completely when he meets Quentin....and that's never really addressed. I have no problem with demisexual or asexual stories, but if Laurence is such a burgeoning dynamo of sexual energy a god uses him as fuel...it seemed strange he would just let that part of himself atrophy with no protest. Yet, I felt more for Laurence and his addiction struggles then I did for Quentin. I'm USAian, but Quentin's weird verbal tics (maybe they're true to life? didn't seem quite right for the modern world) like using "one" to speak of himself in the third person for the first half of the book put me off.
The other problem with Quentin is that he shut down instantly with any hint of romance or sexuality, so I never got any delicious insight into his struggle to figure out his attraction to Laurence at the same time shy away from a painful past...which is the main pleasure of reading romance books, in my opinion.
So slightly disappointing due to the expectations I went in with, but also possibly due to the kind of vague world Laurence and Quentin inhabited that didn't feel like modern day life to me, and which required a ton of suspended disbelief (not for the paranormal parts but for Quentin's situation and verbal tics, the constant going to and from each other's houses without reference to work or Quentin's dwindling finances, etc, constant destruction of the floral shop).
For fans of a certain kind of old-fashioned manners m/m story, this would be the cat's meow.
I confess, I was drawn into the YA/NA look of this rebranded cover (I checked out the prior cover as well and felt that the old cover actually promised what the book contained, unlike the new one). I think it set up expectations about the kind of story within that the book did not deliver, and that may partially be what didn't work for me personally. The new cover promises a YA/NA book with main characters on an emotional journey discovering their powers and growing in a romantic relationship.
Instead, what I feel we got was a cozy paranormal m/m demisexual story in some vague corner of San Diego where paparazzi follows famous people around and pagan gods are worshipped. In other words, a perfectly wonderful paranormal m/m story but not what I was looking for.
Laurence is a drug-addicted florist. Quentin is a British noble on the run from his father (although with the extent that the paparazzi follow him around and he is featured in the news, it seems really hard for me to suspend my disbelief his father doesn't know where he is) laying low in San Diego. They meet, and are drawn to each other, just as Laurence calls down a pagan god to his mother's floral shop.
Laurence is intensely sexual, but all of a sudden that changes completely when he meets Quentin....and that's never really addressed. I have no problem with demisexual or asexual stories, but if Laurence is such a burgeoning dynamo of sexual energy a god uses him as fuel...it seemed strange he would just let that part of himself atrophy with no protest. Yet, I felt more for Laurence and his addiction struggles then I did for Quentin. I'm USAian, but Quentin's weird verbal tics (maybe they're true to life? didn't seem quite right for the modern world) like using "one" to speak of himself in the third person for the first half of the book put me off.
The other problem with Quentin is that he shut down instantly with any hint of romance or sexuality, so I never got any delicious insight into his struggle to figure out his attraction to Laurence at the same time shy away from a painful past...which is the main pleasure of reading romance books, in my opinion.
So slightly disappointing due to the expectations I went in with, but also possibly due to the kind of vague world Laurence and Quentin inhabited that didn't feel like modern day life to me, and which required a ton of suspended disbelief (not for the paranormal parts but for Quentin's situation and verbal tics, the constant going to and from each other's houses without reference to work or Quentin's dwindling finances, etc, constant destruction of the floral shop).
For fans of a certain kind of old-fashioned manners m/m story, this would be the cat's meow.