This is composed of eight short stories that take place in the same fantasy world. Main characters from some stories occasionally have cameo appearances in other stories. If I had to briefly describe this volume, I'd say it's slice-of-life m/m Hogwarts by way of Zootopia.

I really wanted to love this. Honestly, I expected to love this. It's by the creator of The Girl From the Other Side, a series I've enjoyed so far (I've read the first four volumes), the furries on the cover looked appealing, and I'd heard it was sweet.

Some of the stories were sweet. I count the story involving the bear and human (young wizard?) and the story about the deer and lizard in that category. The story about the unicorn and the griffon was nice too - not necessarily sweet, but certainly warm. Although I would have liked it to go on just a bit longer, long enough to confirm that the unicorn had definitely finally found someone he could trust.

The characters weren't just humans who looked like animals - they all retained some of their animal characteristics, which often played a part in the volume's stories. Usually it was little things: the unicorn could tell whether someone was a virgin or not, and the peacock fanned out his magnificent feathers whenever he went out courting. In some stories, however, the characters' animal characteristics played a bigger role. I enjoyed this in the story about the deer and the lizard - it took place in winter and featured a snuggling arrangement between the coldblooded lizard and his warmblooded roommate. However, things got a little too intense for me during the story about the bats (food regurgitation that morphs into the beginnings of sexual exploration) and the story about the wolf and the goat (the line between "I want you" and "I want to eat you for lunch" is distressingly thin).

There were three stories I didn't like. The very first story was one of those: a hare slipped his secret crush, a more academically gifted Siamese cat, a love potion designed to make him do whatever the hare wanted him to do, fall asleep, and then wake up with no memory of what happened. So, basically a magical date rape drug. The hare only used it to get a kiss (there is no sex in this volume, just occasional kisses), but it still grossed me out. The other story I really disliked was the one about the peacock and the crow. What the crow did was neither sweet nor okay. I found myself hoping that the peacock would eventually discover what he'd done and ditch him. The story about the dragon teacher and his much younger orphaned dragon student didn't quite cross my personal lines - the dragon teacher didn't act on his budding feelings and hadn't even yet realized how he felt - but I disliked Nagabe's presentation of the teacher's feelings as sweet and romantic.

I really liked Nagabe's character designs and artwork, and I liked a couple of the stories enough to want to reread them. I just wish I'd liked the overall volume more. Also, wow, this has a lot of unrequited love.

Extras:

Each story includes two info boxes about the animals the main characters were based on. The volume ends with eight four-panel comics, one for each story in volume, as well as a comic-style afterword by Nagabe that's very much "I love furries, and so will you!"

Rating Note:

That's my 3 stars of "ehh, I don't know" rating right there.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I loved the book - so nerdy and cute, it was a really good reads!

I was in a mood to read this since I was looking for a good interracial romance. I have enjoyed this series, although it's been years since I read Boss Man. It's not perfect. The writing needs some extra tweaking. It's serviceable and a little forced at times. But it's also very charming and Cole and Lauren are a good couple. Lauren is a sweet girl. I loved her and I wanted the best for her. It's hard when people are used to seeing you a certain way and they can't get outside of that when you grow up.

Cole's a bit of an idiot and he knows he. He knows he threw away a good thing. Now he wants to convince Lauren they belong together. Lauren should have moved on, but she hasn't. She still loves Cole just as much as she always did. But she's not going to put herself in the same emotional danger zone with him. It's going to take some serious convincing on his part, if he can get his head straight and acknowledge what he really wants.

I loved seeing the couples from the first books. Fancy and Headley are friends with Lauren, but also Fancy is Cole's best friend. She is the voice of reason and gives Cole some truths he needs to hear, although he's reluctant to listen. Max and Troy are settled down and very happily married. They want to help their friend be happy too. Cole feels left out because they have families and he doesn't. Although he always thought that wasn't what he wanted anyway. He's come to realize that they have real lives and not just playboy lives. That gets old after a while. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." That's what Cole has to do.


It's true that this wasn't as good as the first two books, but it's very enjoyable. I liked seeing Lauren get the man she loved, and for Cole to realize what he wanted was something he had almost thrown away.

Russian literature seems to have a very bleak undertone to it, though I must admit that the only Russian authors that I have read are Dostoyevski and Chekhov, and the only other author that I know of (and do intend to read one day) is Tolstoy. I guess when you are swamped with the plethora of English writers, then writers from other nations really have to stand out to be noticed, but then I suspect that that is also the case in England.

I am not sure if Russian literature developed in the same way that English literature developed, but as I have mentioned previously Russia was pretty much thrust into the modern age where as the countries of central Europe gradually developed, and I suspect that this sudden rush had an effect upon the national consciousness. Russia never experienced a reformation and at the turn of the 20th century was probably the only country in Europe that operated under a feudal system of government. However, ideas had been filtering in for the last hundred years, and revolution was boiling under the surface.

However, the Seagull is not about revolution or the backwardness of Russia, but rather it is a play about unrequited love that is played out among a group of artists who are trying to define themselves through their art. We have a novelist, an actress, and a playwright, and each of them have their own ideas of who they are and their own ideas of how they desire to express themselves. The playwright is an interesting character in that his plays are simply non-traditional and also play out in the existential role. The problem with that is that nobody actually understands what is going on but him, which in a way leaves him feeling that he has failed as an artist.

Then there is the idea about unrequited love. In this play it is not simply one person pursing another but I believe up to four people who are all pursuing each other, and getting nothing in return. Unrequited love is a very painful experience to go through, and I ought to know because I have been through it too many times to count, and it is not simply me pursuing a woman who does not want to return my affections, but being blind to another woman that wants me to show affection to her. I guess the other problem is that I am what is known as a hopeless romantic. I want romance in a world where romance is dead and only the physical matters. Okay, people are still romantic today, but I have in the past got so caught up in a passionate desire for a romantic relationship that I have blinded myself to what is really going on.

Hollywood has a lot to answer for with regards to unrequited love though because, unlike this play, these love triangles all end up working themselves out. Take the Big Bang Theory for instance. For two seasons Leonard is chasing Penny but getting nothing in return, and all of the sudden it works out in the third season (but not for long, though by the sixth season they are back together again). In real life this really does not happen, or at least in my real life this does not happen. Instead, I have ended up moping around my house pining for a woman that I can simply never have, yet as I look back on it now I see how foolish I have been. In fact, a part of my life I almost felt that I was not complete unless I had a woman to pine over, and in fact the pining was more desirable than the relationship itself. In the end though, I have come to feel content with my singleness , but I still don't know how long that will really last (the singleness that is, not the contentment).

I read this years ago, but I didn't really remember much about it. Downloading the Kindle and doing a reread was a good move. I liked this quite a bit. I miss the books where the heroine is a plain Jane. That trope doesn't seem as popular nowadays. The heroine tends to be exquisitely beautiful now more than anything, at least in my opinion. Sara wasn't really a plain Jane. She just wasn't tall and model Slender and blonde. Alex certainly had a very powerful obsession with her. Everyone could tell he was in love with her, except Sara. I like when the hero is crazy about the heroine, but she's a bit oblivious (but not in a she thinks she's too good for him kind of way). Alex is definitely a Lynne Graham hero but he's not quite as arrogant as some of hers run. He seems a bit more vulnerable. I think there would have been less trouble for them both if he had just been honest with Sara about being in love with her. Instead, he was sending out all these mixed signals and getting mad at her because he thought she was still stuck on her ex-fiance.

Glad I did a reread when I did.