Four Things About Willing Prey
The erotica is competent. It gets the job done the way a skinflick do, all extremely standard but well-executed Mdom/fsub fare, except for the dedication of the entire novel to primal play. One appreciates the femdom, but femdom deserves better than the sloppy seconds of a still very Mdom centric story, and that’s what it is. The hunts are generally distinct and have some basic workings to them, but despite the competent sex, after a while things get remarkably less interesting after the clothes come off. This book hammered home the draw of having distinct sex scenes as much as technically proficient ones—books with less sex scenes, with worse sex scenes are more memorable in terms of being able to identify specific moments as “oh this is the one where—” compared to “and then they fucked”. The former, provided the sex scenes are good, is a lot easier to reach for when doing the literary equivalent of signing into one’s PornHub account.
The porn is, mostly, just skinflicky, also. You won't be getting a lot of tender emotions that feel real, here. The character writing in this novel isn’t adding anything except making the plot chug along. Claire’s shitty ex-husband Keith is the main motivator for the emotional gratification and validation, but I can’t say you wouldn’t save time by looking up primal play PWPs on Ao3 and reading x reader imagines. There is, at least, an identified emotional/character obstacle for both Claire and Shane in order for them to stay together in a functioning relationship, but with characters this shallow, the legs supporting this conflict are as strong as sickly baby deer’s before it gets hunted down by a wolf and eaten. One of the few things you learn about Claire is that she likes the home improvement show Real Estate Wreck. It is presented simply as a relatable detail the reader can presumably insert themselves into—you never get an inkling why she likes home improvement shows, or even this one in particular, even though Shane has never seen a home improvement show and thus would have more to say on the topic than “it’s good”. It’s stated in a throwaway sentence that Shane is a nerd about anything involving robots. In a better novel they might have then switched over to watching some Robot Wars, or something.
3. Compared to Claire’s shitty ex husband, Shane’s emotional deal is that his father expected toxic masculinity out of him, and his theoretical arc is partially unlearning it and gaining the ability to communicate. Based on the text, he’s meant to be a real guy with pathos harmed by patriarchal ideals in a grounded story with emotional heart. Also based on the text, he’s a less assholey alpha male in much the same vein as every other alpha male, as he takes a page out of the dark romance textbook by stalking (albeit “lightly”) Claire, having become fixated with her ever since he met her. (You find this out before the first real hunt even begins—well, shit, there’s the emotional tension of having two play partners fall in love over the course of business arrangement instead of the same isekai-cheat-power-esque instant gratification so many of these books have fucking gone.) Claire mentally remarks that a stable, healthy amount of closeness and intimacy compared to her ex switching between extreme codependency and total disassociation, but that’s laughable given the stalking the reveal. In the book’s climax, Shane feels like a failure for not Protecting His Girl via potentially lethal violence he wanted to do, and Claire assures him that he’s not and his father was wrong to impress upon him such values, but how could this ever come off as anything but hollow words when him wanting to do potentially lethal violence is the very thing the audience is here for? Twilight did more to address the problem with this mentality, albeit barely. It feels more compromised than if the book had just let Shane be full alpha.
4. Shane is obsessed with Claire at first sight. In fact, he’s so obsessed and in love with her, that the only reason he’s into primal play (or any other kink at all) is specifically because he wants to do it with her, specifically. He tried it with other people and it was entirely disappointing. Which is just an absolute fucking insult. Here’s a novel dedicated to this kink, for fans of the kink, but the love interest finds kink so uninteresting without his wun twue soulmate. Like every other novel that feels threatened by the idea of the love interest showing any interest or intimacy with anybody who could be sexually threatening to the main character, this shit reeks of insecurity, and with this particular book, reeks of someone who only interacts with kink by writing about it and not engaging with any scenes. Shane’s into every kink as long as it involves Claire, except, specifically, voyeuristic non-monogamy (my theory that women are also paranoid about getting cucked gains another evidence point), Claire describes a red flag in her marriage was that he was too friendly with other women, and she even quips that she might have a monogamy/marriage kink. Hadn’t noticed, sister. This all together makes for a kink book with an egregious level of straightwashing.
