Rating: 2 stars
Buy Links: Amazon | All Romance
Length: Novel
This is a tough review for me to write because I so enjoyed the first book in this series. However, let me take you through a brief synopsis and some of the major problems that just made this a less than stellar second installment in Susan Laine’s Lifting the Veil series.
Genie’s Wish carries us to an excavation site that has been revealed since the lifting of the veil between the human and paranormal worlds. Those who read the first in this series, The Wolfing Way, will remember that the human world must deal with various forms of paranormals who now live out in the open since the veil between the worlds was torn apart, which means dealing with their special powers as well.
At the onset of this story, one of the scientists attached to the site, Phillip Butler, or Pip as he is called, finds a lamp—and yes, much to his surprise with a very real Genie inside, known as Jinn. The two, while being wish-master and genie, still feel an immediate attraction to one another. Unfortunately, poor Pip is quite conflicted for he has been secretly attracted to one of his teammates, Valdemar Velde (Val). (Yes—that is his name and yes, this is when I began to feel a bit uneasy about this novel.)
To add to the discomfort, Jinn is literally in bed with a mesmerized Pip when Val walks in and catches them. However, author Susan Laine quickly resolves this by making the twosome a threesome. Yes, all three men find themselves attracted to one another and it takes no time at all for the three of them to consider falling into bed to discover their compatibility.
Now the action takes a sharp turn when Val is called away to meet with what he thinks is an investor coming to inspect the site’s recent finds and determine if the site will continue to be funded. Unfortunately, the supposed investor turns out to be the head of a pseudo military op that is there for the genie lamp, the very one that Pip wisely had Jinn minimize so that it now has the look of a tiny keychain fob.
The threesome makes their escape after Pip uses his second wish to rescue Val and they take off into the labyrinth that is the excavation site. This is a well-written passage that has our heroes dodging Indiana Jones-like peril and traps and ends with a shocker that I did not see coming!
Do not worry, dear reader, there is a HEA at the end of this novel, along with a consummation scene between all three men that went on for such an incredible length that I found myself wanting to simply skip to the end.
And there is the main problem. Genie’s Wish simply had too little plot and way too much sex, so much so that after awhile I was fairly sure I could have written the how-to on ménage sex. In other words, the story was too flat, the characters became one-dimensional, and the drive to survive their predicament hung solely on the idea that they wanted to see their threesome work out—and, of course, consummated.
I like this author. I think that Susan Laine is a good storyteller and we see real glimpses of that in this novel. When she chose to focus on her plot and incorporated some heart-stopping action, Genie’s Wish became a really fine novel that held my interest and was highly entertaining.
However, those moments were too far and few between. Instead we had a great deal of three men thinking about…well, sex and how they could make this ménage relationship work. Even if we had focused on the relationship, the novel would have warranted more stars. But no, sex was the main topic here and it simply was too much, too long and, in the end, not exciting enough to warrant all the page time allotted to it.
In the end, Genie’s Wish by Susan Laine simply left me wanting and unfortunately, unfulfilled.
