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When an author self-publishs a novel, there’s often a good reason for it: the story is just not written well enough for a traditional publisher to pick it up. Of course, that’s not the case with all self-published novels; I’ve read some really great ones, a few good ones, and the occasional okay ones. But, unfortunately, Joy Spraycar’s werewolf romance, Quicksilver, isn’t even one of the okay ones.
For decades, Quinton Worthington has been looking for the reincarnation of his beloved Serenity—the love of his life, whom his father killed before turning Quinton into a werewolf. Filled with guilt over his uncontrollable urges as a new werewolf, Quinton spends the next one hundred or so years slogging through life—until, one night, a car runs a red light and lands him in the hospital. There, he sees Serenity in the crowd, and he vows to find her again, hoping he can keep his father from her this time.
Serry Miller keeps dreaming about a mysterious man who changes into a monster and chases her through the woods. Married to an abusive, alcoholic husband, she feels trapped in a living nightmare outside of sleep. She longs for the man in her dreams, and she loves him in spite of the monster he becomes. When her husband dies in an accident, she sees the man from her dreams at the hospital. Now all she has to do is find him again.
Though I don’t mind novels with some inner dialogue, Quicksilver contains entirely too much unrealistic inner dialogue, which kept distracting me and pulling me out of the story. The dialogue between the characters is also stilted and unnatural—and passive voice bogs the story down, along with too many sentences that begin with “he” or “she.” Repetition is another a major problem—Serry quivers so much, I began to think that she was made of Jell-O.
If you’re into the romantic beta-male type, you’ll probably love Quinton, but he moons over Serenity so much that it made me feel queasy. I’m not saying that men like that don’t exist; I’ve just never met one, so it feels improbable to me. Serry isn’t much better, with her immature love for Quinton—didn’t she just lose a monster in her life? Granted, Quinton isn’t really a monster, but Serry certainly hasn’t known him long enough to know that. I felt that she should have been a little more cautious.
If it had been better written, with none of the mistakes above, Quicksilver could have been a really good romantic werewolf suspense novel. Unfortunately, though, the author chose to focus more on the gaga aspects of the relationship between Quinton and Serry and less on the suspense—so I recommend that you skip this one.
