Book Review: Mainly by Moonlight by Josh Lanyon

Mainly by Moonlight by Josh Lanyon
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I was maybe two or three chapters from finishing, but I just couldn't. I stuck with it for so long, but in the end, I'd had enough.

This has to be one of the most frustrating Josh Lanyon books that I've ever read. There were so many great magical aspects to this story, that I wanted to love it, but it was the relationship between the heroes that ruined it for me.

First, how in the world could these two guys fall in insta-love, buy a house, renovate the house (with one room complete already), and be planning a wedding for two days in the future, after ONLY TWO WEEKS OF KNOWING EACH OTHER? It takes longer to purchase the house and do the paperwork! Even with the reader's expectations of reality suspended for the sake of this magical world, the whole thing is outrageous. And the more it was brought up, the more frustrated I became. Honestly, the time that they had known each other seemed to have no real bearing on the story, at all. Lanyon could have easily changed this to two years, and the story would not only remain the same, but it would make more sense.

Then, there is the relationship, itself. Once Cosmo found out that John was under a spell, his plans to go through with the wedding should have been terminated. He said, himself, that it might take months for the spell to wear off, and it was only two days 'till his wedding. This was morally wrong; he was trapping John into the marriage, forcing him to do something that was beyond his ability to deny. Cosmo should have at least postponed the wedding to a later date to make sure that John could actually be in love with him for real.

Another confusing misstep was the sex. I didn't read the end (which is where I understand the only sex scene is), but there's a scene in the middle when John tries to sleep with Cosmo, and Cosmo rejects him. This wasn't explained well enough, because it seemed to me that Cosmo just didn't want to have penetrative sex, which would leave plenty of other options, but instead, they just stopped. It wasn't at all that I was looking for more sex in the book (I know that Lanyon doesn't like to put too much into her books), but the way that scene sits now just doesn't make sense. It would be better if it wasn't there, at all.

Ultimately, this book was very disappointing. I was really looking forward to the magic (and I enjoyed the first bit--until the love spell was revealed, and Cosmo decided to keep going with things) and instead was given a morally bankrupt protagonist and an unbelievable plot.

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