Bad, Dad, and Dangerous by Bru Baker, Jenn Moffatt, T.A. Moore, Rhys Ford Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: M/M romance, paranormal romance, urban fantasy
Pages: 424
Published by Dreamspinner Press on October 6, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads
When the kids are away, the monsters will play.
School's out for summer, and these dads are ready to ship their kids off to camp. Not just because their kids are monsters--whose aren't?--but because they're ready for some alone time to let their hair down and their fangs out. You see, not only are the kids monsters--their dads are too.
Even the most dangerous of creatures has a soft spot. These bad, dangerous dads love their kids to death, but they need romance.
Every year, for a few short weeks, these hot men with a little extra in their blood get to be who they truly are. And this year, life has a surprise for them. Whether they be mage, shifter, vampire, or changeling, these heartbreakingly handsome dads might be looking to tear up the town... but they'll end up falling in love. All it takes is the right man to bring them to their knees.
My Review:
What a great collection to really sink your reading teeth into!
Or possibly your real teeth, if you’re anything like any of the dads, and their equally supernatural kids, featured in this fantastic collection of novellas.
I have to say that these stories did a great job of reminding me just what it is I read urban fantasy FOR, that lick of the supernatural that takes the world just one or two steps to the Other, where there is magic, and danger, and danger because of that magic.
These are also worlds that interact with or are nestled inside the everyday human world that we know and love and loathe, and that people are people, with or without extra powers – and that sometimes humans are awful. Power and/or other-worldliness doesn’t make them better, it just makes them different.
And there are entirely too many people who hate those who are different, whether that difference is natural or supernatural.
What’s fascinating about this collection is that the kiss of the other comes in so many different flavors – all marvelous – and all feel just on the edge of possible that sends a shiver up the spine. At the same time, each of the protagonists is also a single-parent, and no matter how otherworldly their kids might be, they are all still kids and still challenging parental authority in age-old ways.
Even if they also grow fur. Or fangs. Or flowers.
Every single one of these stories had something in it that I fell in love with, whether it was Nation the undead cat in Jenn Moffatt’s Kismet & Cadavers, the vampire dad running a call center for an insurance company and slurping up the excess negative emotions from his staff to keep them a bit less unhappy (Monster Hall Pass by Bru Baker), or the grandson of a witch who falls for a werewolf peacekeeper whose son has just be given a pomeranian cut in Rhys Ford’s Wolf at First Sight.
But my favorite story was Elf Shot by TA Moore. It just gave me the most marvelous case of the creeps with the way that it blended all of the stories about “tricksy” fae and fae courts with the purely human evil of a young man who was infected with hate and the young woman who was smart enough to escape his clutches. This is one where the supernatural elements should be the most frightening, but it’s the human evil that really creeps the reader out.
And every single one of these single parent dads manages to find the one man who can make his life just that little bit completer – by accepting the person he really is under the fur or fangs that generally put mundanes right off.
Escape Rating A-: Every single story in this collection is a win-win-win. I just wish they were ALL a bit longer, because I’d like to have spent more time in these worlds with these people. Even if they are not always two-legged people. Or perhaps especially because.
Guest Post from Rhys + Part 2 of Hunting for Salvation
Thanks so much for having me here! Since I revisited the world of Once Upon a Wolf for this anthology, I thought I’d drop back in on some familiar characters from that story for this blog tour. I hope you enjoy meeting them, again or for the first time!
Hunting For Salvation – Part 2 (Part 1 is part of yesterday’s tour stop at Boy Meets Boy)
Dean’s eyes stared back at him from a pretty face innocent of war and blood and all of the monsters crawling through Ellis’s brain whenever he closed his eyes. The soft green hazel gaze held him tightly in place, more so than the shotgun Cassandra Kelly held steadily aimed at the centre of his chest.
Other than her wide, bright eyes, Dean’s younger half-sister shared none of his rough-hewn features. Dean’s familiar sharp angles and hard, high cheekbones were instead soft gentle curves and plump, sun-kissed cheeks, her mouth a full pout rather than the straight, disapproving line of reproach Dean’s lips were often pressed into whenever he dealt with Ellis. She was about a foot and a few inches shorter than Dean, barely coming up to the top of Ellis’s shoulders but with a shotgun, size didn’t really matter. If he knew one thing about the Kelly clan, it was they knew how to handle weapons, cars, and trespassers and Ellis racked up two out of three on that list.
He’d found her on a hillside ranch deep in California’s valleys, raising alpaca of all things. The fluffy overgrown sheep on steroids were milling about in a paddock behind Cassie, bleating and screaming their displeasure at Ellis’s arrival. Cassie might not know what Ellis was, what monstrous horror ran in his blood but the animals knew. They could scent a predator nearby and nothing she’d said to them could still their anxiety.
Cassie caught him glancing over her shoulder at the herd and cocked her head, keeping the shotgun firmly on him. “We’ve had coyote sniffing around. Lucky for me, I’ve got this here to make them mind their manners. Never would have thought it would come in handy in keeping Dean’s trash from piling up on my driveway.”
Ellis regarded the shotgun, noting its worn stock and well-burnished barrel. It was an old weapon, probably had a couple of generations of Kellys handling it. Clearing his throat, he nodded at the herd, “Not a coyote.”
“Just as bad,” she countered with a hard sniff. “Now give me one good reason I shouldn’t blow a hole right through you? Seeing as you left my brother deep down in a hole he’s not crawled out of yet.”
“Because I’m looking for him.” Ellis shoved his hands into the pockets of a pair of jeans he’d nicked from his brother’s dresser before he left Big Bear behind. “We’ve got… things to work out.”
“Only thing he needs to work out is whatever shit you left him holding,” Cassie spat back. “My brother came back nothing like he left and from what I gathered, you were the one who scooped out everything good from inside of him and ground it down into dust. What the fucking hell do you think you can say to him that’s going to change that.”
Ellis considered his options. The road to Cassie’s place was a long, dusty maze of dead ends and slammed doors. She was his only hope in finding Dean and if anyone was going to put him on the man’s trail, it would be his sister. He didn’t find any fault in her fierce defense of her brother or the reasons she wanted to keep him hidden but he wasn’t going to give up. Not after fighting so hard to break loose of the wolf he’d wrapped around himself and especially not after digging into every wound he had to find the man who’d brought him home.
“One reason, Keller,” Cassie repeated. “Else you’re going to be breathing through a hole in your guts.”
“Because I’m in love with him,” Ellis murmured, meeting her glare with as much honesty as he could muster. “And I’m not going to find peace until he knows that.”
Join us tomorrow at Blogger Girls to hear about ‘Unicorn Snot’ from Jenn Moffatt.
~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~
The authors are giving away a $10 Gift Certificate to the etailer of the winner’s choice at every stop on this tour!