Guest Review: A Matter of Duty by Elizabeth Jewell

Tracy’s review of A Matter of Duty by Elizabeth Jewell

A little over two years ago, Piper met Trey, a shapeshifter who impersonated her dead boyfriend and then led her on the adventure of a lifetime. Along the way, they fell in love.

Now Trey is required to father children to sustain his race. Piper knew this day would come, but she’s not prepared to face Nadia, the shapeshifter woman first in line to have Trey’s babies.

She’s even less prepared to consider the possibility of having a child herself, knowing it’s impossible with Trey. But Nadia’s husband is human…and that’s when things get really complicated.

Let me start off by saying that this review will definitely include spoilers.

When I think of shapeshifters I think of werewolves and were-cats, etc. Trey isn’t like that. He can shapeshift and make himself look like another person – male or female. In the very first scene after the couple start their anniversary day by making love he then shapeshifts into a woman who Piper, Trey’s wife, then has sex with. It was a little off-putting to say the least as I wasn’t expecting the f/f scene.

So Trey is the head of the shapeshifters and has the duty of sleeping with shapeshifter women if they want to become pregnant and are married to humans as the two species can’t procreate together. When Trey gets such a call the tension between Trey and Piper is thick. Neither wants Trey to do it but he has to. When Trey and Piper head to the home of the woman Trey is to impregnate the woman, Nadia, offers her human husband, Brice, so that Piper can have a baby too.

When Trey and Piper agree, a foursome commences. This is where things really get weird when Trey is having sex with Nadia – Nadia shapeshifts and grows a penis so that Brice and Nadia can do Piper at the same time. Talk about strange. I gotta tell you I didn’t find this appealing or sexy at all. I think that what could have been an intimate sex scene went from the strange to the ridiculous.

Besides this being a very somber and heavy book it was just damned bizarre. Though I felt that Trey and Piper loved each other I didn’t get a further connection from them. Piper seemed very disconnected from everything and everyone, including Trey, it was a bit disconcerting. I couldn’t get into the whole f/f scene and the woman growing a penis was just too out there for me. The writing itself was done well but the subject matter was not for me.

Rating: 2 out of 5

This book is available from Ellora’s Cave. You can buy it here in e-format.

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place.

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