review 1: I was a little disappointed with this short read and think this was essentially a complex story that had too much of the important info cut out and left too many questions unanswered. Henare is a , shape-shifter, exiled to lead a solitary life as punishment for an affair with a fellow male shifter. He meets human TJ who suffers physical abuse at the hands of his own family though all we know of this is that he shows up one day with bruises. Nothing more is mentioned and since TJ doesn't live at home, we don't learn the circumstances surrounding this. Henare is well portrayed as detached and closed off as would be expected but the details on TJ are so few, that there is never a believable, emotional connection between the two.With the folklore, this had the potential to... more be a good story but it would need to be a much longer book to develop the characters and their background. I just didn't feel like I knew much about the leads and the ending kinda left me feeling neither positively nor negatively towards it. review 2: I liked this story a lot. We have Henere, who is a mythical creature of the sea. He has been in exile for a long time. Separated from his lover for hundreds of years, he is still waiting. He is living in his human form during the day and taking his true form at night. Then one day a handsome human man with his dog approach him. Instead of leaving him alone, the human pushes all his walls. He tries his best to push him away, but he catches himself thinking about this human, TJ. Then he has to come to some decisions. But can he really leave TJ alone. I really enjoyed the ending. I wanted TJ and him to be together, along with their dog. Even the dog, Butch had come to like Henere. less
