His To Cherish by Jessie Pinkham
Publisher: Evernight Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short story (88 pages)
Other: M/M, Anal Play
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Fern

Love may be within his reach … if he is able to trust in it.

Gabe Thorne was disgusted by his sister’s plan to purchase an empath. She wanted someone who would be compelled to please her, and only her sudden death interrupted the plan. The empath she’d chosen, Ignacio, needs to bond with an anchor almost immediately, and Gabe volunteers to prevent him from being auctioned off to an abuser by his greedy parents.
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Ignacio proves to be a sweet, enchanting guy, and soon Gabe begins to develop real feelings for him. Despite this, and the lifelong commitment he made when he let Ignacio bond to him, Gabe doesn’t believe they can have a real relationship. His long habit of pessimism has protected him from a lot of disappointment over the years. This time? Expecting the worst might ruin any chance of a happy relationship.

Gabe had never been close to his sister, but after her death he still felt guilty that his grief wasn’t stronger. Gabe wasn’t particularly close to any of his family, but he felt it was still a new low that they dealt in what amounted to human trafficking – buying empaths who would attach and become fully reliant on their “owner”. When Gabe meets Ignacio to inform him that Ignacio’s fiancée had died Gabe is rather upset to find Ignacio’s parents as money-hungry as he’d feared. Making the deal despite his original intentions, Gabe has to wonder what he’s going to do with an empath he never expected to have.

I found this to be an interesting and engrossing read. There’s a small reference early on to another book in the series – which I hadn’t read previous to this story – and I was pleased that I could easily read this as a stand alone novel. While set in an alternative/futuristic type of world I didn’t find that there was an over-abundance of weird slang/terms/world-building that I needed to grasp quickly. I actually prefer this sort of “easy understanding” in my sci-fi/futuristic style of stories so I was really pleased and quite relieved. It helped me focus on Ignacio and Gabe’s characters, their situation and the story itself and not have to constantly feel like I was catching up or trying to wrap my head around the world they lived in. Indeed, I felt comfortable enough with the author’s voice, the futuristic world-setting and adored both Gabe and Ignacio’s characters enough I hadn’t even finished the story before I made a note to check out the first book in the series. Personally, I can’t think of a stronger recommendation of any author or story to want to read more, new books before even completing the one I was already in the middle of.

I thought Gabe and Ignacio’s characters to be interesting and the entire situation they found themselves in to be a good storyline. A part of me felt a little like Gabe was “too good to be true”, but I think that’s a bit of cynicism on my behalf. I know I would have hated Gabe’s character had he wanted to take advantage of Ignacio or treat him poorly, so I feel a little unfair thinking the fact Gabe wanted Ignacio to be “free” and have his own life and choices was unrealistically good. The world and setting was certainly different enough that I didn’t feel anything outrageous needed to occur to add extra interest in the plot of characters. Simply the whole situation of what empaths were, and how their lives were structured was plenty of plot and world-building to keep my interest keen and as stated before I enjoyed both Gabe and Ignacio’s characters in and of themselves so that was a bonus.

Readers looking for an intensely erotic story might find the sex parts of this story a little lacking. While Gabe and Ignacio are sexually intimate toward the end of the story the focus was far more strongly upon their relationship and emotional/empathetic connections. While I was pleased they didn’t simply jump right into bed (Ignacio was both quite young and completely inexperienced to the point in my personal opinion of being borderline unable to knowingly give consent) I also would not have been opposed to the two men being intimate a little earlier than they were in the story. I can appreciate, however, that this was a fine line that the author had to walk. While explicit – and the eventual penetrative sex scene was certainly hotly written to my mind – there wasn’t an abundance of erotic, steamy sex in this story.

A surprisingly good, refreshingly different story I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I found the characters and world to be vibrant and engrossing and the relationship between Gabe and Ignacio to be extremely well written. A great new author and series and I am eagerly looking forward to reading more.

His To Hold by Jessie Pinkham
Publisher: Evernight Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short story (89 pages)
Other: M/M, Anal Play
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Fern

Love can be found when you least expect it … if you take a leap of faith.

Cole Gallagher never intended to date an empath. Empaths bond for life, and they like to keep their bonded anchor happy, which is more responsibility and power over another person than anyone ought to have. Despite his lack of interest in being an anchor, Cole gets talked into meeting a coworker’s empath cousin, and he genuinely likes the man.
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Aiden is everything Cole wants in a partner: charismatic, witty, cute, and a lot of fun. The catch is that he only has a few months to find an anchor, so Cole faces pressure to quickly make a lifelong commitment. When Aiden is kidnapped, Cole has to decide whether he will let his fears win and walk away, or take a chance on love.

Despite legally having the same rights as regular humans – empaths are still considered a human rights issue. Empaths are still largely abused, kidnapped and used practically as slaves. Cole and his friend Gabe strongly oppose this sad reality, but it’s not until Cole is introduced to a friend’s cousin who is an empath – Aiden – that the issue hits really close to home. Cole might be reticent about becoming Aiden’s anchor, but after meeting Aiden, Cole finds it just too hard to say no.

I actually picked up this book after reading the second in the series (His To Cherish). I’m normally a stickler for reading things in order, but I have to be honest – I enjoyed His To Cherish enough that I wanted to read the other book in the series and enjoy it too. So I started reading this with both a good feeling and high expectations. I was really pleased, therefore, when those expectations were for the most part met. There was a bit more background information about Cole’s friend Gabe – who is central to “His To Cherish”’s plot – but generally I read this story easily by itself and feel that both stories can be read largely independent of each other.

I was also pleased that while the world the story is set in is definitely alternative – a sort of sci-fi/futuristic mix with some paranormal (empaths etc) elements thrown in – I could easily pick up the lingo and the differences between our reality and the story’s settings. I’m often wary of sci-fi stories because the world are frequently too complex for me to fully grasp and I spend most of my reading time trying to catch up with the world and that loses the pleasure for me in the characters and plots. This wasn’t the case with this story and I really enjoyed how easily I could read it and follow along with Cole, Aiden and the storyline.

Cole and Aiden are both interesting and layered characters. I was pleased that the different plot and world settings made fairly regular characters almost different and unique for their setting. That was quite fresh to me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also was very pleased that Aiden was quite vocal about how the entire situation felt from the empath’s perspective. Showing this other side to the story really resonated with me and made the plot and story itself more complex and deeper than I expected. I found the story very rich and detailed and I absolutely loved it. I strongly feel the author is to be commended on a different perspective to an interesting plot and these two stories are great examples of how turning just a few things sideways can create not only a whole new world, but a different style of story.

With intriguing characters, a great plot and plenty of potential for more stories this is a great read and one I thoroughly enjoyed. I will be eagerly looking forward to any future additions to this series.