The Bear’s Runaway Bride
Amy Star

Paranormal bear shifter romance with much more action than romance, horrible writing, and loads of errors

Blurb:

WereBear Alex always enjoyed living the solitary life in the Alaskan wilderness. It is not easy being accepted as a bear shifter so he was happy to keep himself to himself and avoid unnecessary human contact.

However, Alex’s life was turned on it’s head the day that he heard the shouting and screaming.

He followed the noise to see a woman in a wedding dress running through the forest and being chased by a bunch of mysterious men in black.

He did not think twice and he did what he could to save her from these men.

Now she is ever grateful to Alex for saving her life and it is clear that the two of them are about to fall for each other.

But just who is the bear’s runaway bride and who were the men in black she was running from? And most importantly, what will happen when they return??

If you read the blurb, you immediately get that the bride isn’t running away from the bear shifter but from someone else. So this is not the runaway bride trope.

There is much more action than romance in this novel. It’s the story of a few rescue missions. And it’s a good story. I like action. But I expect more romance, as in the evolution of a romantic relationship, when a novel is categorized as a romance. There just wasn’t a lot of relationship building. I’m giving this two stars because the story was good, and the writing was good in parts. There were just too many errors, which I will get into shortly.

Niomie is a Canada’s First Nation Indian. I like novels that have characters with unique heritage or disabilities. It makes them more interesting. I liked that she was strong, smart, and insisted on being seen as an equal with Alex. I also liked Alex, how his story came out, and how he grew emotionally.

There is unique shifter lore here, but it’s almost like there just is no lore. Shifters exist, but they are normal humans if you exclude their ability to shift and heal somewhat faster. Nothing happens when a shifter has sex, as in becoming lifelong mates. There is no biting, no fated mates, and no shifter culture/spirituality.

SPOILER: There is a HEA, sort of. I really don’t like that it just ends. There is no talk of staying together and where they would live if so, no marriage proposal, no epilogue showing a snippet of their future together. I get that they say they will face whatever comes together, but I would like more specifics!

Graphic sex scenes. Words like labia and vulva are used. These words seem clinical and take away some of the hotness for me. Some of it was really horrible. For example, “His penis deflated and pulled out of her, slick and wet like an insect fresh from its cocoon, and she cringed over top of him.” This description made me cringe too! The language used is so not hot. I feel like the author is trying to say, “They say this book won’t sell without sex in it? Then I’ll punish the readers with my descriptions of sex. They’ll never ask me for sex scenes again!”

Occasional foul language.

This is narrated (3rd person omniscient) instead of 3rd person close. We get some thoughts and feelings from both Alex and Niomie. This is unusual for a romance novel, and many people were put off by it in other reviews. Past tense.

Errors: 59, which is terrible! Wrong words, missing words, misspelled names, phrases that make no sense, and things that should be plural missing the s. “By the time…” is missing “the” – just “By time” – 12 times. But it is written correctly once, proving the author does know the correct form of the phrase. Formatting issues like the first paragraph of some chapters being centered text, a page break after a chapter title, extra spaces, and lines of text in italics that shouldn’t be. The author or editor also doesn’t know how to break dialogue into multiple paragraphs. To have the dialogue continue in the next paragraph, you must leave off the ending quotation mark. But you must have the beginning quotation mark at the start of the next paragraph to indicate it is still dialogue to the reader.

Some reviewers complained about the obscure language used. I’m absolutely fine with the lesser used words in the English language. But if they are used, they need to be used correctly! They are often used incorrectly here. It feels like the author is trying too hard to find good words and isn’t fully understanding them herself. Two examples:

“flat expanse of torn up moss and sphagnum”

…moss and sphagnum… but sphagnum is peat moss. So this basically says “moss and moss”. It makes no sense.

“…to survive so much physical apoplexy but have nothing, in the end, to remind him of it.”

The author is talking about the physical wounds that Alex received. Apoplexy is a specific ailment of stroke victims, generally not being able to speak. It can also be used to mean someone can’t speak – suffering a bout of apoplexy. But it certainly does not refer to generally having been wounded as Alex was.

240 pages. $2.99 on Amazon.