Review: Love Rivals by Shayla Mist

Reviewed by Fehu
Love Rivals by Shayla Mist
Less Than 3 Press
Short Story
3.75 Pants Off

Blurb:
Aiden has a crush on Shawn, but there are two problems in the way of the happily ever after he knows they're meant to have. The first is Shawn's new boyfriend, Noah. The second is Jordan, Shawn's best friend and Aiden's long-standing rival for his affections. So how's a man to overcome such obstacles?

Not by accidentally sleeping with his rival. And not by going on the camping trip from hell, where Aiden swiftly loses track of what it is he really wants.



Review
Not quite what I expected, but still interesting, it just had a few twist I'm dubious about.

Aiden is interested in Shawn, but Shawn's best friend Jordan, also is in love with Shawn. Shawn is of course totally oblivious about the private war going on between Jordan and Aiden and decides that they must like each other and tries to help them along. A trip in the wilderness is becoming Aiden's personal hell, but of course he had to go, since Shawn asked him and Jordan would be there. He couldn't lose to Jordan. No one counted on Noah, as in Shawn's boyfriend Noah. Now the two rivals have to work together to win Shawn back or at least make Noah go away.

First of all I'd like to differentiate, that while I might not have liked all about the characters and their behavior, I still liked the book. Of course my not 100% liking the characters did take some of my enjoyment, but all in all I think this story was really promising and if given more time to develop, might have been better. The ending was a bit abrupt and all was wrapped up to quick and easy. I really liked the beginning and I can honestly say I wasn't bored with this story. It's nicely written and it was very easy to fall into the story and follow the characters. Truly aside from the characters moral code, my only problem with this book is that all things progress to quick. Jordan falls for Aiden pretty quick, considering he was in love with his best friend for a long time. I thought the plot and the premise were quite intriguing and for the most part the story delivered what it promised.

Characters are the heart of a story and for such a short story Aiden and Jordan, were quite well fleshed out. I had some problems with Aiden's behaviour towards Noah, especially when he drugged him with sleeping pills; I think there should have been another solution, since Aiden wasn't the evil guy in this story, but one of main protagonist. There wasn't enough time left for him to redeem himself after that.

All in all I thought the story showed a lot of promise: the writing and the dialogs were for the most part engaging and you could feel the tension between Aiden and Jordan. It was easy to get into the story and the characters did capture my attention in the beginning. A bit more page time would have been needed to pull this off, with a more satisfying conclusion. Still it was a nice read!