MLE's Porn and Ponies

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.I really wanted to enjoy this story much more than I did. I loved Jeret in the earlier stories, and I was really looking forward to him getting his own book. I think my expectations might have been a bit high, and that was why I felt so disappointed in this book. Jeret had so much spark, and so much life in the earlier stories, and I felt like he lost so much of that in this story. I didn’t like how much of a damsel he seemed to become in this story, and the sex bored me to tears. This story seems to be so set in the het romance mold with Dagan playing “the man”, and Jeret cast as “the female,” and I am so sick of that. It feels stagnant, and outdated as it plays into all the old norms of masculine sexuality assertiveness and feminine sexual passivity. It was almost straight out of a 1980’s romance. Sure Jeret’s a bit spunky, but he still wants to be protected by his man. I have to say I didn’t really buy the relationship at all. It felt like more of a childhood crush something Jeret would have grown out of years ago then true love, or any sort of lasting bond. I found myself annoyed by Dagan. His paternalistic attitude towards Jeret felt patronizing, and even a bit stifling. I didn’t like how he refused to use the name Jeret had chosen for himself, and by doing so seemed almost to refuse to acknowledge the life Jeret had built for himself, and the capable, and confident man Jeret had grown into. I didn’t like how Dagan wanted to do everything for Jeret instead of working together to solve Jeret’s problems. He felt too stuck on the boy Jeret had been rather than the man he had become. I found Dagan to be too set in his ways, and too rigid, and controlling in general. In a sense he seemed to be everything I don’t like in so many het and m/m love interests. The plot felt tired, and clichéd, and almost more like an afterthought than the driving force of the story. The main antagonist was particularly thin. This person seemed so subtle, and careful in the beginning of the story only to completely fall apart in the end. The final confrontation was almost laughable. I’m sorry, but the person who arranged everything would not have had things end up like that. That was pathetic, and more than a bit anticlimactic. I was relieved that one plot point didn’t go the way I was afraid it might, but that’s about all that I enjoyed. I enjoyed the other stories in this series more even though they shared many of the same elements of this story. I think it was just because after reading three books I had hoped something might have changed, and maybe just maybe the author might have moved beyond the simple, static sexual formula. I felt if anyone had a hope of breaking out of the rigidly defined roles it would have been Jeret, but he seems to lose his edge in this book, and become the same old schmoopey damsel that drove me away from het romance in the first place.