Fani's Reviews > Man & Beast

“How far did I have to run?”

Though “Man & Beast” definitely has M/M romance in it, I would say it is not its main focus. I could easily say this book’s genre is thriller, but the most suited one for this story would be historical fiction.

John, our main character has had a hard life, from a young age he is used to running away in order to survive and not much has changed as we see him in the beginning of the book running for his life from the latest threat. The whole book is dedicated to John’s journey as he, a gay man, tries to endure all the hardships of the 18th century and find a safe place for himself in the American frontier.

The first part of the book was exactly the kind of story I like: a main character, trapped with another person in a small place, trying to survive even though he lacks the necessary skills. Though I did find it interesting following John around as he tries to acquire as many skills as possible in order to survive on his own in the spring, I found the book a bit slow at times, probably due to the fact that I didn’t really like Daniel, the character John was trapped with.

That became even more obvious when John run away from him, the story was still about his survival and work in the frontier but the new set of characters made things more interesting. There were plenty of good secondary characters that were a nice company to our hero and enriched the story, but the most intriguing ones were those who were bad, somehow it was very funny every time I had to read about John’s frustration with having to deal with all the crazy people in the small town.

Still, my favorite character was Palmer, John had to deal with a lot of hardships in his life that left him with a very pessimistic view, so Palmer with his lighthearted and confident personality, accompanied with his humor was the perfect romantic interest.

There was plenty of violence and horror spread throughout the story, but the last part of the book gave me all the full out violent action that I craved as we see our character fighting for their lives and do anything to survive.

“You’re not a man at all. Hell, you aren’t even an animal. At least a beast kills for a reason. You kill because you’re nothing inside, and you know it.”

When I first saw the title of this book I thought it was a paranormal story and though i didn’t find any magic element in it, there were definitely plenty of beasts inside.

I voluntarily reviewed the free copy that I received.