Soul Bonded by Meghan Malone

Soul Bonded by Meghan Malone

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A woman, escaping from a ‘boring’ get together in Lake Tahoe with friends (boring because she expected an exciting singles weekend, but instead found a bunch of woman alternating talking with lust about significant others or offering ‘condolences’ to Katie for her singlehood at the ripe old age of 33 (actually that might have been ‘alternating between making lustful comments about significant others, or bitchy comments about significant others, plus offering condolences to Katie for being single’), ends up finding out that leaving a couple hours early was a bad mistake. A very bad mistake.

That woman, who I’ve referenced indirectly, is Katie Connelly. The book opens on day three or four, or possibly five of her trapped inside her car on the side of the road. She decided that it would be better to stay there for someone to help her than trying to walk anywhere (for many reasons, including her lack of direction, plus the blizzard conditions (that’s part of her ‘leaving early’ thing – if she’d stayed until she was going to originally leave, then she’d have seen the bad conditions and not have tried to drive in those conditions), and her lack of warm clothing (though she has a suitcase and stuff – that part was vaguely confusing to me, though I did pick up on the concept that ‘cute adorable gloves aren’t the thing if you want to keep your hands warm’).

So, right, day three or four. She’s starving, cold, scared, and finally decides to pop out of her car and make a break for it. Except that the snow, by this time, has more or less covered her car. So when she actually opens her car door, it only manages to move an inch, though that’s enough for a mound of snow to fall on her. She manages to close the door again, but she’s in even worse conditions now. Minutes, hours, possibly days pass. Then, while in a daze, Katie notices a bare hand and arm moving in front of her, knocking the snow off of her front window. Then punching through her window. Then vague idea of being carried. Then vague idea of being snuggled against.

When Katie finally awakens she finds herself in an unfamiliar location. Warmer, much more refreshed than she expected to find herself. Very hungry. With a warm body next to her. She jerks up and notices that the warm body is . . . a friendly dog. One thing leads to another and it the man who rescued her turns up, a guy named Rafe. Who, it appears, has no means of contacting the outside world. And the weather conditions are still quite bad.

Katie alternates feelings of fear of the strange muscular man, with odd feelings of . . . attachment, lust towards him. Then, to complicate matters more, someone knocks on the door. She over hears someone berating Rafe for getting involved with Katie. Mentioning how she’s going to be raped, murdered and (forgot third thing, eaten?). Maybe even by Rafe himself. Rafe does not make any comments to this that sound like disagreement with the idea. Naturally Katie is even more disturbed by these events.

Is it spoiler to note what actually is going on? A cabin in the wilderness. A blizzard. Rival gangs sharing territory somewhat peacefully but with an edge of almost war between the two. And both seem to think of outsiders as humans - said with disdain – the humans part. Well, if you haven’t picked up on it yet I’ll point you to the cover – which happens to show wolves.

This book here is the fifth book that I’ve read by this author. Fifth, eh? Anyone coming across my review blind might not catch the significance of that statement, that number. Well, simple enough really – Meghan Malone, the author of this book, has written a sum total of . . . one book. And no I have not read this book five times – this is my first reading of this book. No, the four prior reads by me of this authors work were under a different name – that other name being Meghan O’Brien – lesbian fiction writer.

O’Brien is kind of known for having graphic depictions of sex scenes in her work. Involving women. With Women. Well, how about Malone? Well there are no erotic displays of graphically described sexual encounters between women in Malone’s work . . . but there are involving men and women – or between one man and one woman. Several. The first one was nice enough – the second one was . . . not something I wanted to read (a woman going wiggling around and placing her lips there on a man, and licking, and sucking . . . is not something I wish to read). After the second I reverted to just skimming the sex parts to make sure I didn’t miss anything important.

Overall a rather tense, exciting, thrilling book – if this was television I’d call this a ‘bottle episode’ (no idea if that’s a real tv trope – I picked up that term from an episode of Community – meaning an episode wherein people are trapped in one small location for the entirety of the show – here that means that the action of the book takes place mostly in and around a cabin during a snow storm.

This, as noted, is my fifth book I’ve read by this author, and the fifth that I’ve rated five stars. And yet I still seem so reluctant to start books by O’Brien/Malone. No idea what that’s about – the reluctance.

November 21 2016




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