The Familiar is the start to a paranormal romance series, but I didn’t find it enjoyable enough to continue on with the series. It’s not offensive, it’s just meh. It contains just a tad too much sexual assault for my liking, and it’s not funny at all for a book that bills itself as a ‘Paranormal Romantic Comedy”.
Tom is a man who got himself turned into a cat by an evil witch back. Thirty or forty years later Tom is still stuck as a cat, and hasn’t aged much because the cat form is what keeps dying and cats have nine lives. This witch uses him as a spy and, when she deigns to turn him back into a man, as a sex toy. But he TOTALLY deserved it because he was cheating on his wife with this witch, see. And since he never actually tells this witch ‘no’, because she’ll punish him severely if he dies that means the sex they have after his transformation isn’t rape. I’m honestly not sure if that’s something the author actually believes, or if it’s just what the character tells himself. The problem is that there’s no counterview ever offered, and in the case of him ‘deserving’ this treatment, it’s actually backed up by other characters. Anyway, the witch dies and Tom gets inherited by the witches granddaughter, a lovely young woman who Tom decides he’s totally in love with. Remember his ex-wife? Yea, me too. But she’s OLD now see and that’s gross. Tom has to convince this woman to break his spell, but she doesn’t even believe in magic. OMG.
So yea. It’s a book. A book that I read. And despite the ending, which was a teasing cliff-hanger of the sort to make you buy the next one, I won’t be reading further. I’m kind of disappointed, because I think this could have been great fun, but it just wasn’t.
