Author: Grace Duncan
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 213 Pages
Category: Paranormal/Fantasy, Shifters, Mpreg
At a Glance: I’ve been reading mpreg for years and this is one of the best stories I’ve come across!
Reviewed By: Ben
Blurb: Liam Scott is sick. That’s not supposed to be possible. As a wolf shifter, he’s supposed to be able to heal. The omega gene he was born with means he’s capable of carrying shifter young and Liam is worried that whatever is wrong will mean his one-day hope of having pups will be dashed. But despite the fears keeping him away from the doctor until now, he knows he needs to go.
It turns out the sickness is temporary, but the treatment causes a whole other problem.
Mason’s alpha gene means he’s one of very few wolves who can impregnate an omega male. For two years, he’d been watching Liam, but things kept getting in the way. When Liam shows up in heat, Mason recognizes the opportunity he needs and doesn’t hesitate make to Liam his mate and the father of his pups.
But Liam has old wounds and fears to work through which the pregnancy is only making worse, and Mason isn’t sure how to get past them to show he’s serious about making a life together as loving mates. It’s not until a female wolf decides Mason should be hers that Liam makes his biggest worry known—and Mason can finally put the fears to rest.
Review: My favorite moments in reading mpreg are when I have the pleasure of reading fantastic mpreg—like this one—and showing it off to the mpreg haters, knowing they’ll love it because it’s a great story. And for those who love mpreg, you’re going to love love love this.
Three Hearts is a standard paranormal mpreg with wolf shifters—thus making all the mpreg science magically work—and it pretty much covers all our beloved mpreg tropes: one true pairing, alpha/omega (okay, that one isn’t my favorite), insatiable urge to breed, rich alpha, full term pregnancy, proud alpha with a pregnancy fetish, multiples, and birth! A hint of medical fetishism, a sprinkle of desperation, and a touch of hurt/comfort was icing on our mpreg cake. Add an epilogue, in case you were slightly unsure they’d live happily ever after, and it was pretty much perfect. It has low relationship angst, an easy plot, and is pretty much a fluffy one-handed read. Yay!
I will say the insta-love hit me on kind of a discordant note, and I believe that could have been set up better. There was also a lot of telling and backstory, but that’s sort of expected in fluff and everything else was so good I glossed over it. The one thing that irked me was the assertion that Mason, the alpha, was the one who caused Liam to have multiples.
It’s the egg donor’s (Liam’s) genes that would determine multiples, not the sperm donor’s genes, because the egg donor would be the one releasing more eggs to fertilize. Believe me, there’s already enough sperm from Mason to fertilize every single one of our omega’s eggs, like ten times over, so the amount of sperm has nothing to do with multiples. Even if Mason had super sperm, it wouldn’t matter. It’s one sperm to one egg. As for identical twins, that’s not necessarily genetic. Identical twins, where egg and sperm split into two fetuses, are a happy mutation, but most dogs in a litter are fraternal twins and most human twins are also fraternal.
Usually this sort of scientific slip wouldn’t bother me—because this is fantasy—but the idea of Mason being the reason Liam had multiples was basically the main plot of the story, and even the title is fashioned from this theme. You’d expect an author to pick and choose which aspects of canine and human biology to adhere to and which to ignore in paranormal fiction, so I can’t be too upset, but I was admittedly a bit bummed because it could have been easily avoided.
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of shifters, of whether or not the concept could be hard science fiction. There’s a theory that a male feline’s penis is barbed in order to stimulate ovulation in the female. Another interesting tidbit is canines have their periods during heat. You don’t see that in shifter fiction! *winks*
You can buy Three Hearts here:
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