3.5 stars
Vampires and werewolves – I love reading about them. Werewolf books seem to follow a theme: sexy alpha male, submissive partner and hot animalistic sex. Nothing wrong with that and Luke’s Surprise adheres to all these themes. Luke Morgan is home from college visiting his brother Kalen’s ranch when he meets his mate. He had expected it to be a woman as he was straight, but it turns out fate is a quirky bitch, and in actuality his mate is a man. Both Mark and Luke fight the attraction for all of about 2 pages, then quickly fall into lust and love with one another. Enter another werewolf, Ethan, who wants Luke for himself and we have the villain of the book attempting to drive a wedge between the two newly bonded mates.
There are no real surprises in this book. We have the typical tropes of bonding, mates and Gay-For-You werewolves in Luke’s Surprise. Now I am not knocking these clichés, as I happen to love them, but after a while they can get predictable. So I am going to divide up my review into Pros and Cons, in order to better illustrate different aspects of this book.
Pros
-The chemistry between Mark and Luke is page melting. They go from: “You’re a guy and my mate?” to “Yeah, you’re a super cute guy, get over here and kiss me!” I liked their dynamic and Gay-For-You is a personal favorite cliché that Lavania Lewis pulls off really well in this novel. Their sex scenes are perfectly in tune with two men discovering their new-found sexuality and not being able to keep their hands off one another.
-Kalen and Cody. Luke’s brothers are interesting and yes, you guessed it – gay! Both will have books. I especially cannot wait until Kelan’s novel comes out. His ‘coming out’ was my favorite scene in the book. That is one damn fine man who just happens to be pack Alpha.
-I did not figure out the villain’s henchman until the end. I liked being fooled in a suspenseful book; it keeps me on my toes.
-Luke’s Surprise is a fun read. Considering this is the author’s first book, I found the writing to be tight with minimal plot-holes.
Cons
-The antagonist, Ethan. Every book needs a baddie and Ethan is your typical psycho. A self-hating homophobe he wants Luke for himself and makes attempt after attempt to take Luke away from Mark, some of them quite violent. Unfortunately, I found Ethan to be two dimensional and with no real back-story we never get to see his true motivations for wanting Luke. Yes, I know he’s crazy, but I wanted more than that to explain his bizarre behavior.
-Despite this being the author’s first published book, I felt it relied too heavily on the themes for this genre. Nothing was new or original as we had boy (werewolf) meets boy (werewolf), they are mates, good-bye straight life, hello gay bonded mates who immediately love sex and each other. Just one time, I would really like for a straight werewolf to meet another straight werewolf and fight the mating call until the bitter end. Then of course, give in to the hot, animalistic sex and live happily ever after. However, that doesn’t mean I did not like Luke’s Surprise, I did. I just wish it hadn’t followed the formula of a lot of other books in this genre
so closely.
For lovers of m/m werewolf books, I think you will enjoy Luke’s Surprise. The protagonists are cute; the secondary characters – except for Ethan – are interesting in their own right. Plus if you hurry up and read Luke’s story, you will be ready to buy Cody’s Revelation on May 30th and see what the pack Omega gets up to.