Darkest Hour Before Dawn, by Charlie Cochet (Thirds #9)

[Ulysses]

Darkest Hour Before Dawn (THIRDS #9)
Charlie Cochet
Dreamspinner Press, 2017
Four stars

It’s not like I’m about to stop reading this series. Jeez. I love Dex Daley too much. And Sloane. And Ash. And Cael. You know: the guys.

But I have to confess, I realized halfway through this book that it really is nothing more than a bodice-ripper in butch clothing. It’s a GI-Joe gay fantasy merged with “The Young and the Restless” (and if you don’t know what that is, you’re too young). After 900 m/m novels, it’s no longer really my main thing: and yet Charlie Cochet has made these guys…infectious? Lovable? Hard to let go of?

Yeah, that.

This particular installment of Beaux and Beasts revolves not around Dex and Sloane, whose engagement is already part of the THIRDS culture; but about two side characters, the smallish wolf Therian doctor Hudson Coulborne, and his ex-lover (but always mate) Sebastian Hobbs, big brother to Evan Hobbs, over whom we’ve been making puppy eyes since book one. Hudson and Seb did something bad in the past, and it not only derailed their careers, but broke their relationship. But it didn’t quell their love for each other, just drove it underground. As it were.

This is classic paranormal m/m. The very idea that I know such a thing exists is a measure of how my life has changed over the past seven years. But if you’re going to go for the classic, go big or go home. Cochet goes big, and amidst all the mayhem and the sex, she manages to give us real people with whose emotional struggles we can identify, whether we’re gay men or non-gay whatevers. Dexter has always melted my heart, from the first book; Hudson is my new dream-date; a werewolf Poindexter whom I would gladly take home to my family. Just the way Seb did and does and will.

There is one huge reveal in this book that sort of realigns everything. I can’t say more, but I’m really trying to figure out how Cochet will move this little earth-shaking tidbit into future books.