Title: The Selkie’s Coat
Author: Drea Roman
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: MM Gay
Publisher: Self
Pages: 266
Reviewer: Ulysses, Paranormal Romance Guild
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
A marshmallow alpha with more heart than sense and a stubborn human omega trying to guard his heart fall in love in this first story from the Waves of Fate omegaverse.
“Oops! You dropped your coat!” With these words, waiter Daniel Collins turns alpha selkie Gregory Samson’s life upside down. Because that coat is not some fancy heirloom fur. No, it is Gregory’s selkie pelt, which magically connects him with his seal animal inside.
When Gregory hears Daniel’ voice, he knows the rare human omega is his mate. Too bad Daniel has more than a few misgivings about trusting his heart to a selkie. Because the magical seal shifters have one of the worst player reputations of all shifter kind and Daniel fears a broken heart. How will Gregory convince Daniel to give him a chance?
It wouldn’t be so hard if Gregory’s mother and everyone else would just stop meddling!
Brought together by the magic of Gregory’s coat, can the pair weather insecurities, an interfering mother, meddling friends, and a disgruntled inner animal?
The Selkie’s Coat is a slow burn mm romance with a guaranteed HEA. It is book 1 of the Waves of Fate Omegaverse and can be read as a standalone.
The Review
A whole new world! Welcome to an America where gay people are not shamed, and animal shifters of all kinds exist as a more-or-less well-tolerated minority. It is also a world where (and I loved this detail) ocean-going shifters, like the selkies, have evolved into transoceanic shipping entrepreneurs specifically to protect the habitats and breeding grounds of their various kind.
One of those entrepreneurs is Gregory Samson, handsome dark-haired executive and heir to the Samson shipping empire, one of the richest young men in Seattle (young being the operative word, since Gregory is a selkie, and is considerably older than he looks).
When circumstances lead to Gregory’s coat – in fact his selkie pelt – being handed to him by a handsome young waiter at his mother’s favorite restaurant, it sets off a chain of events that draws the reader into the world of shifter mating rituals and all the social mayhem that follows in its wake. Gregory is a complicated selkie, and Daniel Collins, his unknowing fated mate, is a human omega. Between them, there are enough knotty emotional issues to fill a mini-series. Drea Roman takes us on an emotional ride through their courtship, offering tears and laughter in equal parts.
I have never been a follower of the mpreg or omegaverse subgenre. Maybe it’s because, as a gay man (even though my husband and I raised two kids from infancy), I have never fantasized about actually bearing a child. This kind of gay romance has little bearing on the hopes and dreams of actual gay men in the world today; it is really geared more toward a female readership. I found, however, by just letting go and allowing the emotions to wash over me, it was pretty darn satisfying.
Roman makes both of the MC’s appealing and interesting, but beyond that the secondary cast is fascinating too – parents, friends, co-workers. The idea of a magical seal shifter bickering with his parents the way any young man would is rather charming.
One cavil is that Roman has a strange affect I’ve seen in lots of self-published books: a resistance to using contractions. This creates a weird stilted effect in the dialogue, and it is a habit (see what I did there?) that really should be broken by any writer prone to it.
This book is the first in a promised series called “Waves of Fate.” I ended this book really wanting to read the next volume.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
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