Title: For the Long Run
Author: Elizabeth Noble
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Length: 61,552 words
Genre: m/m Contemporary Paranormal BDSM Mystery Romance
Heat: 3 – Sexy & Mild
Sex Frequency: 4 – Very Often
Keywords/Tags: Insta-Love, Physical Abuse, HEA, Cops
Rating: Not Feelin It
**Some Spoilers**
BLURB
After being bullied into the closet by his conservative senator father, Jay Molloy reconciles himself to a life of one-night stands instead of the loving D/s relationship he craves. When he meets the man of his dreams, trained Dom Eric Keger, all Jay dares to hope for is a quick fling. Eric has other ideas. He’s been hired by Jay’s father to run security at the family’s hunting resort, but now he has his heart set on Jay. When murder victims begin to turn up at the resort, Eric and Jay start an investigation, but chasing down the killer proves less frustrating than dealing with Jay’s abusive, homophobic father. Exploring their new relationship would be hard enough on their own, but Eric and Jay also have to deal with politics, Jay’s fake fiancée, and a murderer who may be something more than human.
REVIEW
This is the first book by Elizabeth Noble that I’ve read. Sadly, I wasn’t a fan and had quite a few problems with this book, the most that I just couldn’t get into the relationship.
Jay is the son of a homophobic Montana senator and the manager of their family’s hunting resort. He and his father barely get along, because his father is such a bastard. He’s making Jay marry a woman he barely knows even though everyone knows that Jay is gay. What most don’t know is that he’s a sub looking for a Dom. He’s surprised to find one the in new head of security his father hired for the resort. People have started going missing recently, young men’s bodies deposited in the forest on the grounds and torn to shreds. The two, while developing their relationship, will have to find out who, or what is causing the deaths, and why — all while dealing with Jay’s father and their own family secrets.
I really started getting into the book in the beginning. The writing itself is fine, but I started finding some of the choices the author made a little strange. The first thing that bothered me was how deeply they started to fall in love, only after a day or two of being around each other. At first I didn’t think it was insta-love, but then I realized that it really was, just without the pretty words. All the actions are there and I missed that early development of the relationship, where they get to know each other.
The second thing ties into this, and it is how they relate to each other in the context of a BDSM relationship and BDSM play. I kept waiting for them to have some sort of discussion about their limits, or at least talking about that int he narrative through Jay’s voice. I never got to hear why he needs what he needs. Though I might be able to gather why after finishing the book, the lack of knowledge about him in particular but also their relationship made it seem like Eric was just taking things over and Jay was a pushover. It didn’t endear me to Eric, because without rules that are laid out for me, Eric’s decisions about Jay’s behavior and what he sometimes forbids and allows him to do seemed arbitrary.
So I had a really hard time seeing these two together. I wish I could say that it was because so much time and effort was spent on the mystery. And it was, to an extent. But in the end, I still found that I was confused about what was going on. I wondered if maybe there was a conscious decision made to limit the knowledge of the “killer” to make it more nightmarish. The problem with that is that even though we might not know exactly in the end what the thing is, I still felt like I needed to know the motivations, and I didn’t. There’s an allusion to a vague notion of why this might have happened, but nothing more than that, and I felt cheated out of an ending. There is a resolution of the smaller family secret subplot, but it was again unsatisfying to me because we’re told in the beginning of the book how much Eric loves subs like Jay, who are strong and maybe a little stubborn, but not pushovers, and I wanted Jay to really take a stand, and not under any influence but his own.
So, I’m sad to say that I just couldn’t get into this book and I can’t recommend it. I can’t say if the book is similar in any way to the author’s previous work, so fans of the author might or might not enjoy this. I’m still looking forward to reading the D/s post-apoc series by this author to see what I think, but I’ll probably be more careful in the future in regards to checking reviews first before reading her books.
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