Rating: 2 stars out of 5

Brent shows up on Corey and Shane’s doorstep in the dead of winter needing a place to stay—and hopeful his mates will provide it, and not mind he’s a frog shifter.

Being a shifter is nothing new to Corey and Shane, but neither is being mates. They’ve been together since before they first met Brent ten years ago—back when Brent was Brenda. Bringing a third into their relationship is more than a little complicated, but they’re willing to try.

But change is always easier said than done, and Brent wonders if he ever really stood a chance at being happy with the men he has always loved and admired.

So much wrong with this story, its hard to know where to start.  Maybe with the things I did like. The cover was cute.  And Whitehall’s use of a female transitioning to male but in an entirely different biological take was imaginative and full of possibilities.

None of which really worked well here unfortunately.

Reading through to the finish was actually a fight.

I found the characters of Corey, Shane and Brent blurred together, so similar in tone narratively speaking, that after certain plot points were made, they became interchangeable in my mind (especially two of them),   But Whitehall asks  so much from his readers, those already arriving expecting a shifter story true.  But one where a frog comes from wolf shifter parents?   Hmmm, without much back-history or biological groundwork laid-out?  Then he expects us to believe there is a pull of a mate bond between these two men as well when one is already happily mated?  And doesn’t make a case for it in the interactions between them in the scenes that play out.

With all my diminishing interest in the story playing out, I started to notice other things…such as the huge difference in species. Corey and Shane are Northern Leopard frog shifters. Brent is a Common Reed Frog, a west African frog species that have been known to spontaneously change sex from female to male. A plot element that makes sense, but why did Whitehall have the other two be a pond species?If you are going to go to the trouble to  give your shifters specific frog species you ought to make them compatible.  Green frogs and Bull frogs,  Northern Leopard frogs with Pickerel or Wood frogs, and most certainly a Common Reed Frog with fellow tree frogs like even a African foam-nest tree frog or green Congo tree frog?

But a Common Reed Frog and two Northern Leopard frogs.  Now that might present a problem right there.  the Common Reed Frog?  A small tree frog, found in Burundi (I just love saying that name) and other parts of Africa.  The Northern Leopard  frogs? A once common and now rapidly disappearing pond frog of Northern America.  So yeah, that’s not really happening in a splash about in a bathtub.

Why all this preoccupation with the natural history of the frogs?  Because my mind and interest needed something, anything to grasp onto.  The story wasn’t doing it for me, neither were the characters.

Let’s just  say this was one tough read, from shifter history I couldn’t wrap my head around to characters I just couldn’t connect with.  Even the plot was one tough slog, narratively speaking.  And I love shifter stories.

But that cover was really darn cute.

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Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 154 pages
Published November 16th 2015 by Less Than Three Press
ASINB0184EQ5BG
Edition LanguageEnglish