torquer holiday sipRating: 3 stars
Buy Links: 
 Amazon | All Romance
Length: Short Story


Otter shifter Bryon is not happy. His terrible boss wants him to work on Christmas and his mage boyfriend has been distant and uncommunicative lately. What is an wereotter to do? Get in trouble, that’s what. When Byron goes snooping around his boyfriend’s workshop, he accidentally unleashes a second Bryon. Now with two Bryons on the loose, can his boyfriend Lucas handle two mischievous, highly-sexed shifters just in time for Christmas?

Uh…wow. Otter Madness is a perfect title for this wild concoction of a holiday story. It contains nothing less than two were otters (or actually one wereotter and one wereotter doppleganger), a homophobic boss, a mage boyfriend who is also a Dom, and quite a bit of BDSM toys and kinky sex scenes. Mix that all together in 27 pages and you end up with a wild mess of a Christmas tale with some very funny elements, some sexy kinky bits, and some things that are just so discordant that the story goes awry.

For me, the best scenes in this story are the ones with Bryon in his otter form. Jerome manages to convey the playfulness, the joy, and willy-nilly scatteredness of an otter in motion during these scenes. But for every scene that reveals just how great it must be to be an otter rolling about in the towels, Jerome then gives us something to shudder at. A homophobic boss who is so unpleasant (calling Bryon and his boyfriend the “f” word and more) that you wonder why Bryon still wants to be employed there.  It’s just such an ugly segment (ok that whole restaurant segment is awful), that I can’t begin to understand why it was included.

Then there is the Bryon on Bryon sex, the D/s relationship between Bryon (and eventually Bryon) and Lucas, that D/s relationship that never quite works because you don’t get enough of the personalities behind it to make it viable. Otters are smart, playful, inventive, and high energy. Submissive? What is it about Bryon that makes that a part of his emotional makeup? We haven’t a clue, especially when the second Bryon shows up and doesn’t quite seem to have the same personality even though they are supposed to be identical. The story just continues on its messy way, dilly dallying over the kinky sex through a story that never quite comes to an end.

A wereotter is a terrible shifter to waste. The mere creation of such a wonderful shifter elevated this story to a 3-star rating. Its antics, in his human form, kept it there. It’s the holidays. If any of the above appeal to you, then this is the story for you. Other than that, treat it as the otter madness it is.

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