Title: Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero
Author: Alex Gabriel
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 301 Pages
Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: Despite what struck me as some pacing issues along the way, there are a lot of delightful things going on in this book that made me glad it caught my attention. It’s irreverent, sarcastic, sometimes a little goofy, full of fun and imaginative characters, and an overall entertaining read.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Superheroes. Evil minions. And one hell of a conflict of interest.
Being related to a supervillain isn’t a big deal to Pat West. So what if his mom occasionally tries to take over the world? All Pat wants is to finish university and become an urban designer. That he moonlights as an evil minion sometimes—that’s just a family tradition.
Then Pat accidentally sleeps with superhero Silver Paladin, otherwise known as reclusive billionaire Nick Andersen. It’s a simple misunderstanding. Pat never means to impersonate a prostitute, honest. But soon Pat is in way over his head, and threatening to fall for the worst possible guy.
When Pat’s mother returns to bring the world to its knees, Silver Paladin races to stop her . . . and all of Pat’s secrets threaten to blow up in his face. How can Pat reconcile being a minion with wanting a hero? Will Nick’s feelings for Pat overcome what keeps them apart? Or will they both lose everything?
Review: If you love superhero/supervillain stories that don’t take themselves altogether too seriously, Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: The Part-time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero (a mouthful of a title that is) might just be the book you’re looking for. It’s irreverent, sarcastic, sometimes a little goofy, full of fun and imaginative characters, and an entertaining read despite what struck me as some pacing issues along the way.
This story starts right out with the bowm-chicka-wah-wow when Patrick West, the night manager of the Andersen estate, responds to a request from Nick Andersen, via his household AI, to “send up a guy.” Pat hasn’t the foggiest idea what that means in its vague context, but hey, he’s a guy, and okay, who wouldn’t want to get the chance to see the Silver Paladin’s secret laboratory? Yeah, Nick the billionaire science genius is a superhero. Or, as Pat refers to him in the derogatory sense, a hoagie. Pat also gets to see a whole lot more than Nick’s lab. In fact, he gets to see a whole lot more of Nick when it becomes clear that Nick thinks Pat is a “companion”. If the unexpected nudity hadn’t been a dead giveaway, the “Are you going to have sex with me or what?” was subtle like a brick to the forehead. Of course, Pat has sex with Nick. Nick is gorgeous, and Pat’s not a complete idiot. And as a financially strapped college student who’s working his way through school, Pat’s also not stupid enough to turn down the easy money and so asks one of his wicked-genius sisters to set up an untraceable bank account to funnel the money into.
What could possibly go wrong? Apart from just about everything.
Pat doesn’t necessarily have anything against heroes, per se. He doesn’t hate them in the sense that he wants to see them all destroyed, but he doesn’t mind when they happen to get humiliated in a fight either. He kind of loves that. It’s just, he’s the son of a supervillain (or, as Pat refers to them with the admiration of a true minion, a challenger), one of the most famous and powerful challengers, if not the most famous and powerful, who wants to take over the world simply because she could obviously do a superior job of running things. That Pat’s parentage is not the only Big Secret he hasn’t divulged to Nick does, of course, cause some issues along the way, but never let it be said that Pat didn’t try to talk to Nick, the big avoider of all things complicated. And never let it be known that Pat doesn’t know how to monologue—or word vomit, whatever—his way out of any situation. He’s a bit of a dude-bro, and that, as it turns out, is part of his charm. It also plays out nicely against Nick’s tendency towards smug smugginess.
The world Alex Gabriel created is not at all what I expected, and that was pretty a wonderful thing. The villains are not altogether villainous, really, and the heroes aren’t heroic in the sense that they don’t seem to be fighting against things that might be defined as strictly evil. I mean, one of the villains—who got her name because of a typo (a typo)—only wants to take over the world to give people better fashion sense, which, you know, that’s kinda funny, and also where’s the harm? Apart from the whole humans liking freewill thing, of course. But no lies, I’d fully, minionly, serve as villain-support to anyone who fights a corporate giant in order to save a small, locally owned bookstore.
Love for the Cold-Blooded is a romance that works its way backwards, for lack of a better description. Nick and Pat have sex, immediately and in a fair quantity, before realizing they like to spend time together not having sex. That’s when the getting to know each other part of their relationship begins. It’s also the point at which Nick being broody and smoldering becomes more about glaring at Pat over something he’s said that Nick thinks is stupid. The joy Pat derives from those eyeball-laser-daggers (figurative, obviously; Nick hasn’t invented that power yet) knows no bounds.
Where I found the pacing of the story somewhat problematic was in the intermingling of the relationship building with the world building, and in the action and chaos that comes along with the hero/villain battles. For those who like a little delayed gratification, this probably wouldn’t ping your radar as an issue, but as the final battle between the forces of good and not-evil went a bit overlong for me, I didn’t do a very good job of resisting the urge to skim to get to the resolution part. Overall, however, there are a lot of delightful things going on in this book that made me glad it caught my attention.
You can buy Love for the Cold-Blooded: Or: The Part-Time Evil Minion’s Guide to Accidentally Dating a Superhero here:
[zilla_button url=”https://books2read.com/Love-For-The-Coldblooded” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon & Other eTailers [/zilla_button]