Rating: 4.5 Stars

Publisher: Smoking Teacup Books

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Paranormal, Series, Humour, Sexy, Knotting, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional TW: Around Consent 

Length: 284 Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon

Blurb:

Not being able to feel pain might sound like heaven… but it’s a living hell.

After enduring more than a year of imprisonment and experimentation, Ash is finally free—but not unscathed. Unable to feel pleasure or pain, and without any memories of his life before his ordeal, he’s at the mercy of his rescuer: an alpha werewolf who promises he’ll protect Ash no matter what.

Drew is handsome, caring, and kind, but he might not be all he seems, and he’s suffering his own ill effects of his briefer imprisonment. When he burst into Ash’s cell drenched in blood after ripping their torturers to pieces, Ash looked into his eyes and didn’t see anything but safety.

But he’s dangerous. And if he can’t control himself, Ash could suffer a worse fate than the one he escaped…

Lost Touch can be read as a standalone and has new main characters, but it closely follows the events of Lost and Bound and is better read in series. Contains knotting, amnesia, pack politics, and a human who’s willing to offer himself up in every way to help the alpha werewolf who saved him. This series does not contain mpreg. HEA guaranteed.

Review:

I shook and shivered and completely lost my ever-loving shit, a stranger in my own body, in my own mind.

I’ve got to start by saying that every single book cover in this series is perfection, not only aesthetically stunning but incorporating the soul of a main character. This cover is no different. I could stare at it all day. It is Ash. It shows him perfectly.

Ash and Drew were part of a a group of beings held at a laboratory-prison for varying degrees of time and now that they have escaped, Lost and Bound, they get their own story. Once they’re out they head to Drew’s pack, he’s an alpha werewolf. Drew’s family is incredibly wealthy and reads like a werewolf Dynasty when they are on page. I would have loved more time spent with them. Scheming uncles, catty mothers and sisters, and little powerplays included. I was waiting for Alexis someone to say, ‘I have controlling interest in Denver Carrington….’ Or perhaps someone Joan Crawford telling the PepsiCo board saying, “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!”

So we have an alpha werewolf and a human? I did think throughout, if human, why in a supernatural lab-prison? But that is brought up later. The writing of willingness and consent in this book may be hard for some people. Ash has more than a few moments of (seemingly) sexual indebtedness to Drew for saving his life after he helped bust him out of the lab. I also know that Ash speaks of the calmness that Drew’s glowing eyes give him, the safety of the protector that Drew is to Ash, the connection that sex provides him, even though he can’t get erect or physically feel it. Even though he’s lost his sense of touch, along with various other sensate input, he’s prepared to have sex with Drew. Drew needs him too as the experimentation on him has left him needing to fuck, knot, and mate big time. He loses control and goes feral but Ash sees the good in him and I did as well. How could you not feel for someone who gets you food that you can tolerate when you’re unwell? Personally, I love moral ambiguity and grey areas, some edginess in my reading and this hits those grey notes so very well. I was here for it because while Grayson’s trademark humour was so on point, Lost Touch is smudgey. Drew has been messed with. Ash has been messed with. Both psychologically and physiologically. All roads lead back to Nate’s (The Alpha’s Warlock) cruel, power hungry and delusional father, Jonathan Hawthorne, who was a shitty parent with designs on world domination. He put in place ways to go about that, including the lab-prison for magical/paranormal beings experimentation, and series readers saw how that impacted Calder and Jared in Lost and Bound. 

Ironically, there’s also a lot of hot sex in Lost Touch. A lot of sexual healing. Size queen thoughts and sex. I mean, holy shit, I, uh, clenched at times, but Grayson takes it and runs with it in her trademark funny way.

“I was going to say lunch is ready,” Drew said, his voice a nearly subsonic growl. “But it looks like you were already eating your fucking hand.”
The words I wanted to see if I could fit your cock down my throat without choking nearly fell off my tongue.

I do recommend you read the other books in this series to get the most out of Lost Touch, at minimum The Alpha’s Warlock then Lost and Bound need to be read prior to this one.

Okay. So, um. That ending. It’s happy, appreciated, but it’s certainly left threads open. Maybe purposely? What exactly is Ash? I have some questions. I wonder if there’s to be a part two for this pair, something tied up within a series novella or perhaps in another series book. I’m just hoping there will be more series books because I love this world. Seeing Nate and Ian, Arik and Mathew, Jared and Calder was definitely a highlight that had me waking my husband in the early hours of the morning as I cracked up, loudly, on numerous occasions. My mind is blown that Nate and Arik run a business together and no one has died yet, and I mean one of them. It’s a goddamn miracle! But they are always, always hilarious. Eliot Grayson must have a head full of chaos with these guys in there. It was also good to see Calder and Jared happy and settled and surviving the Armitage pack. Congrats, guys.

I’d love to see a reunion between all of these characters. Jared and Calder, Ash and Drew have shared experiences to connect further over, and I think that Ash will need guidance from Nate and Arik. Hmm, okay. Rethinks that. Poor Ash. Perhaps nothing permanent. Nate and Arik may eat him alive as the snark does not appear strong within Ash and these guys live and breathe and shit gonna rip-you-a-new-one snark. Interestingly, no one was introduced as an MC for another book. Okay, a fairy also got out of the lab break, but, ta da, more on these guys would be freaking amazing. I adore the crazy Armitage gang, and that love extends over to Drew and Ash and the Kimball pack as well. Anything Colin gets devoured by me. Sorry Newt, I like you too… but Colin Kimball…*heart eyes.

Oh, and extra points for references to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The 5th Element. Classics. All I have to say to that is, ‘Leeloo Dallas Multipass’.

Overall:

This book has deceptive depth to it. Imagine a world without touch, without taste, without full sensory integration which immensely complicates true intimacy? Stir in amnesia to that mix. The cherry on top of the tasteless cake is that it’s been created so a team of warlocks could lab rat the hell out of you, possibly indefinitely. Then a fellow lab rat, a werewolf, saves you, and he’s bloody and fangy and is also intensely all about you, who’s also your link to the world when you’re in such a precarious place. It’s an incredibly interesting premise and Eliot Grayson deftly adds a sense of tragedy, humour, and hope to the overarching story, and then there’s the sexy romance that plays out in ways that I would call a dollop of desperate, detached ‘n’ delighted. I love me some Eliot Grayson and the Mismatched Mates universe. More please. 4.5 Stars!