This was very grotesque and absurd and surreal and I lowkey wish to forget it but also it wasn't all bad...confusing, mostly.

Based on the title and description I was expecting a wilde gay ride with a funny and relatable lead – but alas, I barely got any of those. A missed opportunity or a lack of imagination, who will tell…

Our main character, Brian, is a werewolf with not much going on in his life; which is why when he is contacted by Tyler, a werewolf wannabe entrepreneur who offers him help to get back on track, Brian accepts. This „help” turns out to be basically werewolf life-coaching in line with the common alpha routines that one may encounter on the internet: meditation, cliché mantras, work-outs with a dash of toxic masculinity. After a while the routine actually seems to help Brian during the lunar cycles but his affiliation with Tyler and his new self drives him further apart from his actual friends. Now he has to decide whether he will stay within Tyler's circle as a „reformed” werewolf or he will seek his friends' understanding and leave Tyler behind…except leaving seems to be a rather difficult option in more than one ways.

Now, I did not expect high-brow literature, but was hoping for an extreme, entertaining story with dark humour and lots of queerness, yet this book somehow managed to miss the mark in every way possible. To begin with, Brian, the main character is quite unlikeable which I understood to a certain degree but it also just felt like he didn't really have a personality to develop; he just bitched about things in his head but rarely ever spoke out.

Except for one occasion when he called out some disguised homophobic microaggressions but even that catharsis faltered as there were no satisfying results to it.

The biggest chunk of the book is made up of the life-coaching and self-help descriptions, only these were not pleasant to witness. I wanted to have a gay-werewolf-experience, not a rise-n-grind-type-bro-experience; if I wanted the latter I would just tune into one of those alpha-sigma pods instead. The humour was near non-existent: I am almost 100% certain the author wanted to display ludicrousness with some absurdly comical scenes in a sort of campy way but these scenes simply did not deliver. I don't recall even snorting once, let alone laughing at something ridiculous, it was usually just awkward or not funny enough. The gayness was mentioned A LOT and we got to view about exactly TWO incredibly embarrassing sex scenes, – yet I was left wanting more, or wanting something else. Maybe this was mundanely realistic but then why was it trying to be realistic in a book featuring werewolves??? WERE WAS THE WEREWOLF SE- Give me something more exciting, for f*ck's sake!!! (I'm not a furry, I swear.)

One positive aspect was Brian's relationship with his friends: while Nik and Darby were honestly too good for him, their bond formed at work seemed to have been transformed into genuine fondness. Unfortunately, we don't get to see this a lot, since their crumbling connection due to Tyler's interference is a focal point and their fights after are not so fun, not at all. 

The way they joined forces at the end was pretty nice and cute and dope, as foolish as it was.

 

The climax was all right in a sense that it brought closure to this storyline with Tyler but it ended a bit too quickly compared to how much we had to suffer witnessing Tyler's shenanigans prior. Another thing at the end…

There was this random dude who dated one of the friends and he is revealed to be the offspring of fuckin' Van Helsing. I absolutely expected him to be involved with werewolves somehow but this came so out of the blue, I was flabbergasted. The ending also sets up Brian & co. to become werewolf-hunters with the Helsing dude, – I suppose I wouldn't have been so surprised if the entire book was this preposterous.

 

All in all, there were some interesting features to this book, fun ideas and I did not hate it but sadly, it was just not well executed and left me as a bored gay and not even a werewolf. 

bruhhh