Book – The Wolf and the Moon
Author – Kayla Bain-Vrba
Star rating - ★★★★★
No. of Pages – 71
Cover – Lovely!
POV – 3rd person, dual POV
Would I read it again – Yes!
Genre – LGBT, Roman-esque, Warrior, Romance


** COPY RECEIVED THROUGH NETGALLEY **


Well...gosh, that was a good read. Exciting, exhilarating, nerve-racking and full of heart-stopping tension and romance! I couldn't have asked for more.

There was so much story in so few pages that I feel like I've just finished some epic novel. The characterisation was spot on, the world building was brilliant and I love the little tease of the cover that totally set me up for an idea that wasn't real, but after reading the story, makes perfect sense. There's a perfect balance of romance, action and Gladiatorial violence, while still being emotionally evocative and beautiful.

For me, the brilliance comes in the form of Myka. He's the emotionally connective character that we first begin to feel for and experience through Dag's POV. It takes a while before he gets his own POV and I can totally understand why, but it's also part of the clever storytelling, letting us get an idea about him before we actually learn who he really is in his own words. Dag is the adrenaline fueled victor, loving the high life and yet being completely broken from the loss of Myka ten years ago. And, I absolutely love that we get plenty of flashbacks that let us see how they were ten years ago compared to how they are now, ten years later. Because the important story arc is how they deal with rediscovering each other so many years later and all the things that have happened in between.

I could gush about this story for days, but I'm going to leave it at this – this is an excellent story by a great writer that I'll be keeping my eye on in the future. Not only will I be re-reading this, but I can honestly say that the epilogue destroyed me, emotionally, and I look forward to being slowly picked apart and put back together again sometime in the future.

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Favourite Quote

““I'll wait for you,” he whispered breathlessly. “In this world or the next. I'll be waiting for you.””

““You can't feel if you're dying or not?” Maybe something more was wrong.
Myka looked away. “I've felt like I was dying a lot lately.””

The flashbacks carry the story for me. Those were the times I really believed in the connection between the two main characters. I was hoping that emotion would carry through in the present scenes, but i don't think it was a strong. Still, this was a good read.

I don't really know how to begin with this book. It's one that I'm not solidly on a rating for, as it kinda swigs two different ways for me. First off, the concept was intriguing to me. Gladiatorial fighting, indentured servitude, and a drive to free yourself is fantastic, it's why Gladiator did so well. I loved the male on male love, Dag and Myka are lovable characters. However, that's where my love ended.

Bain-Vrba seemed to be packing much more than she had room for into 59 measly pages. I'm assuming that it was originally published as a short story, however I feel that so much more could have been expanded on it order to make it into a stronger novel. This book fell short in more ways than one for me. The relationship between Dag and Myka remains mostly unexplored, which is disappointing. The action is choppy, and the arena battles are woefully under utilized. I also found the flashbacks to be confusing, as they never seemed to seamlessly fit with the rest of the story.

A lot of my displeasure with this book came from the lack of description and reasoning. There didn't seem to be a driving force for a lot of the actions and reactions, and I was left without a clear image of what was occurring. Also, you can use other identifiers besides the character's name repeatedly for sentence after sentence my friend. Just saying.

All in all, the concept behind this book deserved a better execution, and more development. This read to me like an extended outline for a more in-depth story. Also, I could have done without the sex, girls tend to not write accurate male on male sex. Sorry babe.