Title: Alpha’s Law
Series: Mountain Wolves: Book One
Authors: Sara York and H.L. Holston
Publisher: Self-Published/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 208 Pages
Category: Fantasy, Mpreg
At a Glance: Ultimately, Alpha’s Law is a book that deals mostly wonderfully with a tough topic that sadly falls into the category of a bit bland.
Reviewed By: Jenn
Blurb: Max Gaines has known one thing all his life: he loves Jamie Matthews. Best friends since childhood, Max and Jamie are inseparable until the day of Max’s sixteenth birthday when he presents as an Alpha instead of an Omega. With Jamie being an Alpha too, they cannot bond and all their dreams of a future together are dashed.
Jameson “Jamie” Matthews has only ever wanted one man, his best friend Max. He doesn’t care when Max turns out to be an Alpha just like him, Jamie is willing to disregard society’s rules and mate with Max anyway. But when Jamie’s rut comes, all their hopes of bonding are in ashes. Jamie joins the Army to hide his pain and to hide from Max.
Left behind, Max is determined to find a way for them to be together. But time is running out as Jamie’s unit is captured by the anti-shifter group The Amity Brethren. Can Max save Jamie in time, or does fate has something different in mind for them?
Review: This book was nothing like I expected from reading the blurb. I thought that we would be getting a retired army man returning to his pack and having to deal with his lost love, and a threat that would wipe out his family and friends that would throw the pair into working together and learning to compromise and have a relationship. This is not that book. Instead, we ease into their lives with Max’s move to a new school, and how he meets Jamie, where we also learn of a werewolf hate group, The Amity Brethren.
The book explores gender roles and gender identity through the werewolf ‘genders’ of Alpha, Omega and Beta. Though the Betas were never really explored much, the Alpha paralleled the male gender in our society while the Omega represented the female role, up to and including a lot of 1920s thinking on what was suitable for Omegas. They were deemed unfit for active duty in the army—except in medical roles—despite human women being able to serve.
I found the take on Max not feeling quite right in his body and being told what gender he was going to be, despite that not ‘presenting’ itself until his middle teens, interesting. He never felt like the Omega he was told he would be, and even presented as an Alpha, yet he wished so much he could just be an Omega—how it could make him happier, even though he disagrees with how they are treated. In so many ways I hope anybody who feels disassociated with their gender pushed on them can relate to it, and that it helps them in small ways to know they aren’t alone.
Jamie’s acceptance of Max, and the love he has for Max, is sweet and makes you adore his character even more. Especially when he is faced with the potential hardship and the discrimination they would endure to be together, as it was almost a law that an Alpha could not mate with an Alpha.
Possible Spoiler
I also feel like the threat of The Amity Brethren was never real. They talked about them, how their actions were affecting others, and we even got a rescue mission that showed some of the horrors they perpetrated, but the book never lingered on this and never really allowed our empathy to be engaged. While there was some action, and Max and Jamie did end up fighting some of the Brethren, they were never that immediate.
Ultimately, Alpha’s Law is a book that deals mostly wonderfully with a tough topic that sadly falls into the category of a bit bland.
You can buy Alpha’s Law here:
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