A Non-Stop Rollercoaster of Delight: Nine-Tenths by J.M. Frey
Nine-Tenths by J.M. Frey Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
PoV: First-person, present-tense
Published on: 30th September 2025
ISBN: 1738148556
Goodreads
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Colin Levesque is at loose ends. He's finished university, but has no career; he adores romance novels, but he's crap at relationships; and his prickliness is a detriment at the café where he's making ends meet. He also has a crush on his regular Dav, a homo draconis who comes in every morning to read his newspaper, sip his double-strong coffee, and stare longingly at Colin in return.
So it figures that the day Colin gets up the courage to do something about the sexual tension simmering between them, he also learns that Dav has an embarrassing habit of hiccupping fire when he's nervous. Which, in this case, destroys the fancy custom-made bean roaster. When Dav volunteers to take over the coffee roasting with his fire-breath, being squished together in the hot, cramped kitchen leads to even hotter kisses.
Everything's finally happening for Colin—until people start claiming the dragon-roasted coffee has cured their genetic ailments. As their budding relationship struggles under the scrutiny of scientists and media, the hype around the coffee leads the lovers to be inducted into a centuries-old conspiracy: dragon-roasted food has always healed humans. And the most powerful draconic nobles have been withholding this symbiotic advantage to keep themselves on top. Colin and Dav are determined to expose the truth, but if they're not careful, their objections could goad power-mad monarchs into destroying everything they hold dear.
Including each other.
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights~dragons are watching your social media
~chocolate allergy BEGONE
~brain weasels begone also
~in hindsight I’m embarrassed the title confused me
~whatever genre you think this is, you’re wrong
This isn’t exactly what it looks like, and that DELIGHTED me!
The synopsis already does a good job at alerting you that Nine-Tenths isn’t especially conventional: it’s a Coffee Shop (not-)AU, in a contemporary fantasy setting, with (shapeshifting) dragons, and a queer romance. But, it’s also a mystery – a mystery which leads into a capitalist conspiracy – and uncovering that is going to be world-changing.
ALL OF THIS IS ON THE BACK OF THE BOOK.
But this is Frey, who as far as I can tell has never cared about making her stories fit in neat little boxes – so Nine-Tenths is a good bit more than that, too. The romance took several turns that had my jaw on the floor. There’s political intrigue. There’s mental health. It even digs into environmentalism and the Land Back movement!
THIS BOOK IS AS TWISTY AS A SNAKY DRAGON, IS WHAT I’M SAYING HERE.
Colin is adorable, and far too relatable – a Millennial with anxiety, a Most Excellent friend group, and no idea wtf to do with his life. He is also very into Mills & Boon-style romances, and I loved how that influenced his narration – there are moments where he breaks the fourth wall to explain to the reader that this is the point in a romance where such and such typically happens, or perhaps that other thing, and maybe it would get annoying if he were doing it constantly, but as it was, it tickled me pink.
There’s this thing in stories called “the inciting incident.”
And mine? It’s a goddamn doozy.
Dav is, uh. Far less relatable. Because he is, in fact, a dragon. Albeit one who spends most of his time in human form (which seems to be the norm for dragons in this setting). This is perhaps the first of Frey’s surprises for the reader – because although it looks very, very like ours, Colin’s world is in fact ruled by dragons. And humans know this and are fine with it. Possibly because the dragons stay out of most people’s day-to-day lives, very deliberately obscuring exactly how much power and control they have over humanity. Which is something Colin runs into face-first after the events of the synopsis go down, because dragons REALLY don’t want everyone to know that they could cure every one of humanity’s ills and just…don’t.
He thought humans should rule humans.”
“That’s stupid,” I chuckle. “It never works. Hello, look at America. They had a whole failed revolution about it.”
I mean, understandably? I would be upset. I imagine most other people would be, too. Especially after Covid, which is over in Colin’s world (I’m jealous) but left Colin in particular wrecked after his dad died of it.
Nine-Tenths packs a lot of different genres into its pages, but it is primarily a romance, and whether that romance will work for you or not…is going to vary, I think. Because Dav is not exactly the Perfectly Unproblematic love interest; he’s not, thankfully, the kind of Toxically Masculine hero we get in, say, Paranormal Romances, but if you have hang-ups about love interests not disclosing really important shit, then you – like me! – may be unhappy with our Dav. This sort of thing would usually have me defenestrating a book, but two important details made it work instead: first, Frey is very, very good at making you believe that Dav really does have good intentions and is not trying to be an ass. I was never in any doubt that Dav really and truly loved Colin to the ends of the earth and back again, even when I wanted to toss him off a cliff. (He has wings, he’d be fine!)
I had spoken.
And he had listened.
I had dreamed.
And he had made it a reality.
The second point is…a little hard to explain, but critical.
I think – I worry! – that some readers are going to be nonplussed by the way in which Colin doesn’t react to A Terrible Thing. The Thing is obviously, objectively bad. But Colin seems to shrug it off – even to himself, in the privacy of his head, he doesn’t freak out the way he very clearly should. But this is so freaking believable! This IS how people (don’t) react to Really Bad Things, a lot of the time! Because The Thing is so completely inconceivable that it becomes ridiculous, it doesn’t register as real, not on an emotional level. Instead there’s shock, and incomprehension, and the kind of reflexive justification/rationalisation/dismissal that a lot of us do when our loved ones do something that we can’t make sense of. Most people would just…carry on, until something caused the reality of the situation to smack them in the face. So you don’t burst into tears, or start throwing things, or yelling. Because it doesn’t feel real, yet, even though you know it is.
And also…there’s a…not very rational element to romantic love, quite often. If my partner pulled what Colin did… I’m not saying I wouldn’t care, but I wouldn’t freak out the way I probably should because it’s this person specifically. To whom the normal rules do not apply, when we get right down to it. I think the same thing is at play between Dav and Colin. And that’s why I found Colin’s (not-)reaction so believable, so relatable. It makes no sense on any kind of rational level, I get that, but in context, on an emotional level, I don’t struggle for a second to understand why Colin stays so calm. It’s because he loves Dav far more than is rational, reasonable, or safe.
He should be running for the hills. But it makes perfect emotional sense that he doesn’t. And it’s only luck, really, that that doesn’t end incredibly badly for him.
Moments like this one, where we were both still sleep-muzzy and warm, it feels like I might overflow, like there’s no way I’ll ever find room for all of this…all of this. But maybe I’ll expand, somehow, to hold it all under my skin, close to my heart. I’m Dav’s ground, and his gravity, and his center. And he’s my air, and my laughter, and my heat.
(Except, it’s not really luck, is it? Because it’s not random. Colin decides he can live with this specifically because it’s Dav – because he trusts Dav. And he has reason to trust Dav, Dav has earned it. Colin doesn’t flip a coin to determine whether or not he’s okay with all this; he decides, based on his experience and knowledge of the man he loves. And I guess he could have been wrong – but he wasn’t. His idea of who Dav is was correct. That’s not luck, is it? That’s – knowing someone well enough to trust them, I think.)
There are also contextual mitigating factors, which are crucial in keeping this the kind of glittery, joyful romance that it is, instead of something much darker. Basically, dragons are wired in such a way that this Deeply Problematic Thing they do is okay, really, mostly, because…they do it with genuine adoration and love? Or put another way: it’s Deeply Problematic when humans do it to each other. It’s…less dodgy when a dragon does it to a human? Or, no wait, let me try again: within the relationship, the couple, human and dragon – between them, everything is perfect. The Deeply Dodgy Thing is only in how other dragons perceive the relationship. It’s not the relationship that’s fucked, it’s…how it’s viewed by outsiders…?
This is so hard to talk about without spoilers, GODS.
If you can’t accept what Dav does, and that Colin is okay with it, and that this is despite that a True Love story – then Nine-Tenths isn’t going to work for you. But I think Frey does a really excellent job at convincing us of their love, and convincing us that yes, it really is the huge, all-consuming, ridiculous love that would make people let something like this go. It’s not just that I have experienced that myself; I was convinced that Colin felt it too. Not every writer can pull that off – I’ve definitely seen times where it’s failed, and you probably have too – but this isn’t the first time Frey’s done so; her book Lips Like Ice, written under another penname, hinged on the same thing, on her ability to convince us that the characters felt something deeply not safe, sane and consensual for each other. Not obsession; nothing as simple as obsession. Love doesn’t have to be obsessive to be…not-logical?
I don’t know how else to put it. But if you haven’t felt it in your own life, I think Frey will make you feel it here, between these two characters.
I’m making this book sound so much more fucked-up than it is, I swear! It’s not like that (even if, objectively, it probably should be!) Nine-Tenths made me GLITTER. That sparkly, bubbly, giggly feeling you get while reading the best kind of romances? I felt that the whole way through reading this book. It’s FUN, even though it’s tackling a myriad of serious topics. Colin goes into a proper depressive spiral at one point; the story digs into (the tip of) colonialism; there’s creepy totalitarian/Big Brother stuff with the dragons controlling so much more than the humans think they do. And so on. And yet, despite all of that, I was having fun.
“That’s just the brain weasels talking.”
The resolution depended a little too heavily on some neat coincidences and the villain being abominably stupid at a crucial moment, but not so badly that it broke my immersion in the story. And…those are really my only critiques. It’s not just that Nine-Tenths is really fun, a book that elicits that incredible glitter-glee that Romance is always chasing – it’s also the twistiness of the plot, how Frey consistently declined to take the story in the directions genre-conventions have us expect. Sometimes this was extremely dramatic and jaw-dropping; sometimes it was much quieter and subtler; but it’s always, in a word, awesome. I had to laugh several times when the story flipped the tables on me and what kind of story I thought this was: from Contemporary to Contemporary Fantasy, to Cli Fi, to [View post to see spoiler], to Political Intrigue (Land Back), to Political Intrigue (Elizabethan) – it was just REALLY GREAT to read a story unabashedly colouring outside the lines, one where I couldn’t predict WHAT was going to happen on the next page, never mind the next chapter!
That could have felt messy and disjointed, but it didn’t – Frey’s too good for that. Despite playing hopscotch with genre Nine-Tenths is wonderfully cohesive; it feels twisty in the way that real life is twisty, where curveballs can come from outside your frame of reference but not outside your reality. The world fits together so well that it supports even the most unexpected reveals – it’s always ‘oh, yeah, I can believe this world would do that/have that’, not ‘wtf is this now?!’
And ultimately? I love Colin. I LOVE him. He is wonderful. He is a mess and he is funny and he cares so much and he’s SMART and he’s a romantic and he is Fierce and he COMMUNICATES LIKE A GROWN-UP, and does Dav deserve him??? In my humble opinion, no, Dav doesn’t – but Dav means well, he is so intensely and unquestionably earnest and genuine, and he makes Colin happy, so we’ll allow it.
I loved this book. It surprised and delighted me from start to finish; it made me laugh so much; every single character, down to the most minor, felt fleshed-out and fully alive; it gave me all the glitter-glee I could possibly ask for. It made me ache and flail and rage and kick my feet, and I teared up more than once. I’ve highlighted so many wonderful lines. I can already tell I’m going to reread this over and over, whenever I want something that makes me feel fizzy and joyful. It’s going directly onto my Best of Year list, and a has a forever-spot on my Faves shelf.
TL;DR: The tagline says ‘love is a treasure worth hoarding’, and SO IS THIS BOOK!
And if you still need convincing, you can read the first five chapters here!
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