Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Self-Published

Tags: Gay Erotic Romance, MM, Omegaverse, Humour, Knotting

Length: 322 Kindle Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

He’s my ex-boyfriend’s brother, an alpha with an old-fashioned face and a rugged demeanor. I’m the omega who’s managed to get myself stranded in the middle of nowhere with him during a snowstorm.

It’s fine though. It’s not like anything’s going to happen between us. We’re both adults and we have this thing called self-control. There’s nothing to worry about.

Except, there’s a trickle of heat flowing through my veins, and things are happening in my body that I can’t explain.

Wait. I’m not going into heat, am I?

Gone Wild is a blisteringly high heat MM omegaverse romance, featuring a swoon-worthy alpha, an incorrigible omega, and a love story that will melt the coldest of hearts.

Review: 

I’m not much of an omegaverse reader. The ones I’ve loved are Leta Blake’s Heat of Love series. They are so good. I’ve reread them and re-listened to them multiple times. The world building, the background, the interwoven characters, the families. It’s incomparable in the ABO world, in my opinion. However, I was feeling in the mood for smutty and well written after I’d just read three books that were a bust. I needed addictive characters, good writing, solid editing. It was time to give another omegaverse series a crack.

Gone Wild is pure fun. It’s smutty as fuck and I loved these characters – Lucien and Branson – so much so, that I’d read another book with them in it in a heartbeat.  

Gone Wild has three delineated parts. They aren’t named as parts on page but you have the pre-heat, the heat, then post heat.

Lucien ends up at Branson’s cabin for a Bad Bitches Getaway weekend but he doesn’t get any of the messages that incoming inclement weather has cancelled plans. So he’s the only Bad Bitch that turns up. However, Branson, his ex’s alpha brother, is there. Hmm, hot alpha. Omega going to go into heat, what could possibly happen? Thank god every-fucking-thing. 

Lucien has always seen Branson as a man of few words, at home in his weekend cabin in the woods where the bulk of this story takes place. Lucien also sees Branson taking up space in a sure alpha way, wearing flannel, enigmatic, muscles for days, tattoos, height, broad shoulders, hair. Lucien thinks of Branson as old-time in looks and demeanour. A wild thing. Lucien likes the city, has never had a heat, thanks to suppressants, and has opinions about small town living. He really doesn’t know a whole lot about being an omega, just that he’ll keep avoiding heats with suppressants. No bonding. Nope. He likes his career in marketing. If he needs to scratch an itch, he hooks up with other omegas or betas. No messy hormonal biology. Plus he knows that omegas have been viewed as ‘needy’ and going into heat is a vulnerable thing. 

Heats? Who needs them? Not me, that’s who. The last thing I need in my life is to fall prey to my biology every ten months.

Jensen, Lucien’s ex boyfriend, is an omega, and Lucien actually has no experience with alphas. He also rambles when he’s nervous, a tad sassy, especially after a couple of drinks, and Branson makes him nervous because holy hawtness. Because he’s his ex’s brother. Because alpha. Lucien segues – not seamlessly –  from linen and meditation retreats to Homer’s The Odyssey to global warming in a few sentences. Quite the feat. However, they’re going to be stuck in the cabin for ‘three days and ’bout a week’ and things are ’bout to get interesting.    

Lucien trying to not go into heat and pretending it isn’t possible was a thing. Because, of course, he brought the kitchen sink to the getaway but not his suppressants. Branson knowing what was happening and trying to be helpful was also a thing. Because as nice a guy as he is, alpha biology is real for him. The fact that he’s attracted to Lucien = an extra layer. Once the heat sets in, as much as Branson has been helpful, and he has tried really hard to be, it doesn’t stop the inevitable…  

His legs are moving so fast that he’s little more than a blur of platinum-blond hair and pale skin. So much skin. Such hot, soft, pliable skin that the predator in me wakes from a deep, dreamless slumber.
Stalk him, it commands.
Chase him
Catch him
Fuck him
Fuck him
Fuck him!
I hold back for as long as humanly possible. Then I vault over the kitchen island and give chase.

Welcome to omegaverse!

Oh yeah, you know Branson caught him. That Lucien likes being caught. The humour in this book is funny and well balanced. It had me laughing when I was supposed to. “Calm down.” Uh, two of the worst words a man can ever utter one after the other, even when meant well. Besides, the nerve, how dare someone have a house and not have a knot dildo?! 

  It’s not Jensen’s house. It’s Branson’s. He owns it. He renovated it with his own bare hands if the photos he posted of himself wielding an axe on Instagram were anything to go by. He’s the one who should have thought to provide a knot dildo. I should give him a piece of my mind. Yes. That’s what I’ll do.

And also, Branson should have known that Lucien would need to be fucked by him, uh, at some point. No other omegas should ever have been fucked by him!

Branson’s helped omegas through heats before?
How many?
When?
And where the hell do they live?

Mm, hmm. Totally understandable hormonal thoughts, Lucien.

The heat was hot. The sex was inventive. Filthy. Sexy. Passionate. I’ve attempted other omegaverse books where the sex is pure cringe. Not here. Sure, there’s lots of it, but I didn’t skip a beat. I hung on every goddamn word. Great writing. It’s not easy to write good sex like this while making it sometimes wild, sometimes humorous, sometimes thoughtful, making the characters addictive.   

The third part, or post heat, was rather adorable. Loving. This was when they truly found each other, snitching lie-detector white light and all. From the beginning Branson knew a lot more about alpha and omega connection. It’s something he was attuned to as a responsible alpha. He also knew how he felt about Lucien way before this weekend. It makes sense if you think about an ABO world. Lucien needed to catch up, and he did. No drama. No angst. I was happy for them both.

Going in I thought to myself, ‘322 pages with probably a lot of sex, Kaz, can you really go the distance?’ Hell yeah, as it turns out. The world encapsulated in this omegaverse is not unlike others – omega history has not been kind but it’s no longer like years ago, etc. The heats, the burning up, the biological reactions and crazed rutting all exist, but Reign adds their own take and expands on it. It’s witty. The characters amusing, engaging. The title leans right into the ABO world with the MCs being human but with a wild core. Sure, an omega can have a cross to bear. So can an alpha. They both get to move through that into revelling in it, moving into their entire being. I now have this in audiobook because I want to hear it narrated. I totally bought into this storytelling. So for Gone Wild, it’s 5 Stars!