One bad decision can change your life forever.
It’s midnight in Berlin, and drifter Leon is hitchhiking home in the rain, covered in feathers after a wild festival in the city park. He can’t believe his luck when he’s picked up by a hot guy in a Porsche. That is, until he learns his driver is a creature from his worst nightmares—and plans to turn him into one too. He runs, but he can’t escape the werewolf’s bite.Christoph made one mistake, but he’s paying for it plenty. He took Leon for a rogue werewolf on his way home from a hunt, and by the time he realizes the truth, it’s too late to do anything but make Leon a monster to save his life. That doesn’t save Christoph from the pack leader’s harsh punishment.
As Leon struggles to cope with his horrifying new reality—and his mixed feelings for the man who bit him—he’s desperate to discover not only what’s happened to Christoph, but the secrets their pack leader is hiding from them all.
Secrets the pack will kill to protect.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Cat gives this one 3 meows...
Midnight in Berlin is an interesting story full of intriguing characters. It is a different take on Werewolves. The story is rather dark but that is what really made the story for me.
Leon is an American that is in Berlin going to lots of concerts. He finds odd jobs and stays in hostels. On a rainy night after a very fun concert where it rained and he got coated in feathers he decides to hitchhike back to his hostel. A handsome man in a Porsche offers him a ride. Soon the ride turns into horror as Christoph takes him deep into the woods to a ramshackle house. He runs but is caught. He wakes up finding himself a werewolf and Christoph being punished. As things get scarier and scarier he decides to find Christoph with the help of Silke, the only female and they escape. Cristoph, Leon, and Silke go on the run, but Leon finds out that Christoph plans revenge after he gets Silke to safety.
I liked the characters in this story a lot as I always do J. L. Merrow books. The setting is both beautiful and eerie. The one thing I don't like is all of the German and foreign words. the cities and stuff weren't so bad but the conversation words threw me. I know it was important to use them it is just a personal thing for me, words I have to look up or struggle to pronounce throws me out of the story. I also never quite understood how Christoph knew about other packs or why he thought Leon was a rogue werewolf. There is also another question that I had left unanswered concerning Silke but since it is part of the ending and a twist I won't say what.
There are a couple of great twists, the story is gripping, eerie and kept me on my seat so if you like unique characters, foreign settings, a different take on werewolves and a satisfying ending you will like this.
Excerpt...
MIDNIGHT IN Berlin. Party time. Music pounded through the park. It seemed like half of Germany was dancing, and I was soaking wet and covered in feathers.
Seemed like as good a time as any to go hitchhiking.
See, I’d met these guys at a bar, and they said they were heading on down to the Tiergarten for some festival or other, did I want to come along? So I said yeah, because you know, why not? Plus I figured the best-looking one was kind of into me.
So I ended up in this massive tent on the Straße des 17. Juni, soaked to the skin—did I mention it was raining like the second coming of the fucking Flood? I kept looking around for some weird guy in a dress to come sailing up in a boat the size of Kansas and scoop up two of each animal, one male and one female, which is pretty damn heteronormative, if you ask me. The air was ripe with the odor of hot, wet bodies and alcohol.
We were drinking vodka straight out of the bottle and listening to—hell, I don’t know what you’d describe them as. A percussion band, I guess, except with a band, you’d expect some sort of musical instruments, you know? These guys had a car. Yeah, that’s right—a car. Which they were ripping to pieces and banging the shit out of with hammers and God knows what.
It was actually pretty good. Heavy. The kind of music you don’t hear so much as feel, deep in your sternum and in your soul. That makes your whole body vibrate, different parts to different notes, until you feel like some Stone Age tribesman banging rocks together. Like an artificial heart; as though if you got it just right, you could cheat death itself. It was… real, somehow. Intense.
Then some guy with a pillow climbed up on what was left of the hood. As he ripped the pillow in half, scattering feathers all over the crowd, we all jumped up to catch them, high on booze and that crashing beat. Though we didn’t catch many, we didn’t have to, because they fell right on down anyhow. And feathers? They meet wet clothes and stick like shit to a blanket.
So there I was, covered in feathers, watching the hot guy and hoping…. Well, hoping for a lot of things, but one of them sure as hell wasn’t what actually happened. Which was that he stuck his tongue down the throat of some anorexic Goth chick. Despite the fact anyone could tell just by looking at her she wouldn’t blow him without a condom in case she accidentally swallowed some and put on an ounce.
It kind of put a dampener on the whole thing, though I’m damned if I know why I let it get to me like that—hell, it wasn’t like I’d been looking for a relationship or anything. What’s the point? Everybody leaves you in the end. I’d learned that lesson the hard way when I was seventeen, and it hadn’t gotten any less true over the dozen or so years since then.
So anyway, that’s about when I started thinking it was time to head on home. Well, home for the duration, which was actually some bargain-basement hostel on the wrong side of Charlottenburg. It seemed a hell of a lot farther away than it had on the way over, and the rain hadn’t stopped any, so I figured, what the hell, I’ll stick out my thumb, see what happens. Did I mention the drinking-vodka-out-of-the-bottle part?
What happened was, a Porsche pulled up. Which kinda surprised me, because weather like this, it’s usually cheaper cars that stop. Your Porsche drivers tend not to empathize a whole lot with guys who have to walk home in the rain. Plus they tend to get pissy when you drip on the leather upholstery.
“You want a ride?” the driver asked in German.
I was thinking Duh, but I didn’t say that, obviously, because for one thing, he was doing me a favor, and for another he was kind of hot. More than kind of, I decided as I got a closer look. He was tall, at least as far as I could tell while he was sitting down. Lean and sort of wiry. Light brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, like he’d been growing it since the Wall came down. Looked better on him than you’d think—he had the type of face you associate more with crew cuts, dueling scars, and maybe a monocle, probably going by the name of von-something-or-other. Like in The Prisoner of Zenda—not the Stewart Granger movie, that was just a rip-off. The other one. The one with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rupert of Hentzau, throwing a knife at Ronald Colman. Damn, I love that scene. Good-looking and dangerous. Just how I like them.
And he was gazing at me like he’d been starving for a month and I was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Seemed like the night was looking up. I gave him my best smile as I climbed into the Porsche, where I buckled up and started shedding feathers.
“Thanks. I’m Leon,” I told the guy.
Seemed like as good a time as any to go hitchhiking.
See, I’d met these guys at a bar, and they said they were heading on down to the Tiergarten for some festival or other, did I want to come along? So I said yeah, because you know, why not? Plus I figured the best-looking one was kind of into me.
So I ended up in this massive tent on the Straße des 17. Juni, soaked to the skin—did I mention it was raining like the second coming of the fucking Flood? I kept looking around for some weird guy in a dress to come sailing up in a boat the size of Kansas and scoop up two of each animal, one male and one female, which is pretty damn heteronormative, if you ask me. The air was ripe with the odor of hot, wet bodies and alcohol.
We were drinking vodka straight out of the bottle and listening to—hell, I don’t know what you’d describe them as. A percussion band, I guess, except with a band, you’d expect some sort of musical instruments, you know? These guys had a car. Yeah, that’s right—a car. Which they were ripping to pieces and banging the shit out of with hammers and God knows what.
It was actually pretty good. Heavy. The kind of music you don’t hear so much as feel, deep in your sternum and in your soul. That makes your whole body vibrate, different parts to different notes, until you feel like some Stone Age tribesman banging rocks together. Like an artificial heart; as though if you got it just right, you could cheat death itself. It was… real, somehow. Intense.
Then some guy with a pillow climbed up on what was left of the hood. As he ripped the pillow in half, scattering feathers all over the crowd, we all jumped up to catch them, high on booze and that crashing beat. Though we didn’t catch many, we didn’t have to, because they fell right on down anyhow. And feathers? They meet wet clothes and stick like shit to a blanket.
So there I was, covered in feathers, watching the hot guy and hoping…. Well, hoping for a lot of things, but one of them sure as hell wasn’t what actually happened. Which was that he stuck his tongue down the throat of some anorexic Goth chick. Despite the fact anyone could tell just by looking at her she wouldn’t blow him without a condom in case she accidentally swallowed some and put on an ounce.
It kind of put a dampener on the whole thing, though I’m damned if I know why I let it get to me like that—hell, it wasn’t like I’d been looking for a relationship or anything. What’s the point? Everybody leaves you in the end. I’d learned that lesson the hard way when I was seventeen, and it hadn’t gotten any less true over the dozen or so years since then.
So anyway, that’s about when I started thinking it was time to head on home. Well, home for the duration, which was actually some bargain-basement hostel on the wrong side of Charlottenburg. It seemed a hell of a lot farther away than it had on the way over, and the rain hadn’t stopped any, so I figured, what the hell, I’ll stick out my thumb, see what happens. Did I mention the drinking-vodka-out-of-the-bottle part?
What happened was, a Porsche pulled up. Which kinda surprised me, because weather like this, it’s usually cheaper cars that stop. Your Porsche drivers tend not to empathize a whole lot with guys who have to walk home in the rain. Plus they tend to get pissy when you drip on the leather upholstery.
“You want a ride?” the driver asked in German.
I was thinking Duh, but I didn’t say that, obviously, because for one thing, he was doing me a favor, and for another he was kind of hot. More than kind of, I decided as I got a closer look. He was tall, at least as far as I could tell while he was sitting down. Lean and sort of wiry. Light brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, like he’d been growing it since the Wall came down. Looked better on him than you’d think—he had the type of face you associate more with crew cuts, dueling scars, and maybe a monocle, probably going by the name of von-something-or-other. Like in The Prisoner of Zenda—not the Stewart Granger movie, that was just a rip-off. The other one. The one with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rupert of Hentzau, throwing a knife at Ronald Colman. Damn, I love that scene. Good-looking and dangerous. Just how I like them.
And he was gazing at me like he’d been starving for a month and I was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Seemed like the night was looking up. I gave him my best smile as I climbed into the Porsche, where I buckled up and started shedding feathers.
“Thanks. I’m Leon,” I told the guy.
Hi, I’m JL (Jamie) Merrow. I’m that rare beast; an English person who refuses to drink tea. I’m a writer of (mainly) m/m or f/f romance, mostly contemporary or paranormal, but with a fickle muse that occasionally ambushes me in dark alleyways and drags me off, cackling, to write historical or science fiction. Some might call all this pillar-to-posting tragic evidence of a short attention span; I couldn’t possibly….er, what were we talking about, again? ;)
I'm a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.
Find me online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow
love the excerpt
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review, I may pass this book.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the post!
ReplyDelete