Wanna Be Your Dog

Title: Wanna Be Your Dog
Author: Glyn Soitiño
Publisher: Torquere
Genre: Paranormal M/M
Length: Novella (17K words)

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Leslie

THE BLURB

Having decided to take a break from the road, shapeshifter Ethan is living the quiet life in a dog refuge. He has no intention of allowing himself to be adopted, but when handsome Luke visits the refuge, seeking to take home a rescue dog, and chooses Ethan, the prospect suddenly seems far more attractive.

Luke’s loneliness after dumping his abusive boyfriend has now been banished by the comforting presence of his beautiful new dog. But when Luke’s ex, bent on revenge, launches an attack on his life, Luke soon finds out that he got more than he bargained for when he adopted Jet.

THE REVIEW

Regular readers of the reviews here at jessewave’s site know that I don’t generally read shapeshifter stories. But I read one back in February that I enjoyed quite a lot (review here) and I decided to give a couple more a try, including Wanna Be Your Dog.

When the story opens, Ethan is living as a large, black German shepherd at an animal refuge league. He’s been there for a few weeks and avoided being adopted by snarling and baring his teeth at anyone who comes near his cage—until Luke shows up, that is. Even with his black and white dog vision, Ethan can tell that Luke is gorgeous. Luke, for his part, has never owned a dog. But a disastrous relationship with Kyle has just ended and Luke decides that maybe a canine friend who can shower him with unconditional love is better than the human kind, for the present time, at least.

They are settling in as dog and master and everything is going well—except for the fact that in human form, Ethan is gay and he is developing some serious hots for Luke. Of course, “there are certain lines that are never crossed” so he despairs of ever being able to show his true feelings—until an incident occurs with bad-boy Kyle. To save Luke’s life, Ethan has to shift and he figures the jig is up…or is it?

This wasn’t a bad little story. It had some humor, especially at the end, and didn’t take itself too seriously. Luke didn’t freak out upon learning that his beloved dog was a man; he took the news so well that the man became his beloved, too, and pretty quick at that. (I guess I should put in an insta-love alert, for readers who shy away.) Bad-boy Kyle was enough of a buffoon that he kept drama light and not too angsty.

The story is told in a fairly straightforward way, with the requisite sex scene and a few info dumps to get past narrative humps such as, why was Ethan living as a dog at the animal shelter, anyway? As a short novella, it passed the test of being a moderately entertaining lunchtime read. If you are looking for exquisite writing or hate shapeshifter stories, then give this one a pass. But if you want an easy read that will absorb an hour or two, then this little tale might fit the bill.

As for me, I think this will be the last shifter story I read for awhile. I feel that by reading three, I gave the sub-genre “the old college try.” The first one was surprisingly enjoyable; I suspect these latter two are more representative of the typical fare of these types of stories. While I didn’t find the stories dreadful, I do have other styles I enjoy more—and other new sub-genres to experiment with—and I’ll be focusing my attention on those for my reviews here at the site.