Camilla Ochlan

Wow.....this was....disturbing. Ladies and Gentlemen! Introducing Lucy and Xochitl, the two of the most inappropriate heroines I have come across in a very long time.

These girls body-shame, stereotype, belittle and insult pretty much every person they meet, and still somehow manage to run a business. I mean, some of the stuff that was attributed to the mouths of these 'heroines' was downright disgusting.

Brace yourselves bitches, winter isn't coming just yet, but it might by the time you finish reading this review. The rant is just that long.

Intro wise - Chapter 3 says it all...

“Could your loved one be a Feral?
Need to housebreak your Hound?
Need Werebeast removal?
You need
The Werewolf Whisperer
Satisfaction guaranteed.”

Yeah well, Caesar Milan called – he wants his shit back.

The editing was so poor it made it almost impossible to follow the plot. The entire thing was riddled with SHOUTY CAPITALS, JUST IN CASE OUR BRAINS COULDN'T PICK UP ON THE INVERTED AND REGULAR EXCLAMATION MARKS THAT THE CHARACTERS ARE BAING LOUD!!! A lot of it was in Spanish, offering little or no translation, so brush up on that Espanol if you want to understand it. Mainly, just the swear words will do; add to that multiple supporting characters popping up every other sentence that came with barely a few words of description and virtually no background to speak of, and you wind up with a massive headache from just trying to follow the damned thing.


The book itself was written in the third person but the carriers of the narrative changed with such speed that you had no clue who was talking, whose POV are we following, or where the hell were we all going. Mess, it was all a big mess.

Now for the characters themselves:

Xochitl and Lucy or Xo and Lucy, and I will call her Xo because my European brain keeps butchering the pronunciation. The authors tried really, really hard to make them sound badass but they sadly didn't read badass. They read as disrespectful bigots with a serious need for an attitude adjustment. Their badassery was nothing more than insults to everyone around them accompanied by profanities in two languages. It was like listening to a kid trying to sound mature by adding 'fucking' in front of every other word. Badassery comes from the way you act, not how badly you speak. And the actions of these two???

Lucy is the 'Whisperer'. She is obeyed by the weres, the only thing she needs to do is issue a command. And she uses her talents to help people with their furry problems, that is -affected people and their friends and family. That on it's own is nothing I have a problem with, I mean that's why I started reading the book. It's the way she does it that's warped. If you have a chance just read the first chapter, it will all become crystal clear. She treats her clients as idiots and their affected relatives like rabid Pomeraninas. I shit you not, she shouts HEEL BOY, DOWN BOY to a human being that's by her own words infected by a virus that can and will affect them and their families for the rest of their lives. Completely dehumanizing the infected victim named Jimmy by making him preform for treats, she then proceeds to insult and cuss out the parents in their own home for having been traumatized by their child going friggin wild and not knowing how to cope. She finishes her triad with asking to be paid for her services...... Because she is a professional that knows her job and values her clients and what they, and their afflicted loved ones must be going trough. Yup, this is the MC, the 'Whisperer', the lifesaver....Oh and one of the services she provides? Killing your kid if it's rabid. For a fee... Oh boy....

I've asked Jimmy how would he rate the service he received...

Alrighty then....

Xo is an unique character herself, doing her damnedest not to let Lucy have all the fun or steal the thunder. I can't help but imagine her as an extremely muscular and healthy person with a severe aversion to food and everybody who eats it. Why is that, you ask? Because from page one she has nothing but an array of colorful insults for anyone on the heavier side. Again, refer to the first chapter where there is a chase scene, and Xo speaks to one of the characters conveniently named Fat Dan, “Hey Gordito! Roll to me, you big tub of lard”, a few chapters down she almost runs him down singing “There goes the lard-ass!” She described Fat Dan as being obviously fat, sweaty, in his thirties, living in his mother's basement....and a BRONIE?



You did not just stereotype and ridicule an entire fandom using the worst cliché you could possibly find....

Wow...Just fucking wow...

Not to hold just Fat Dan to the candle, Xo does this a lot. There's an officer named Ramos who was trying to flirt with Lucy, and she graced him with, ”pudgy bald officer, chubby lovesick puppy, this chubby pendejo and Gordito” Gordito seems to be her fave...

Like I said, I had this book on TBR for ages, and I was really excited about reading it, I love a good UF/PNR, but this took bad on a whole new level. It was shallow, vapid, dumb and ignorant. The authors didn't really do themselves any favors with bringing these two characters to life. I found them incapable of living up even to the blurb, and that is only a few sentences long, let alone the whole novel.

I recommend this to no one. Not a single soul...In fact...… (más)

ABR's original
The Seventh Lane audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Talked into a job he didn’t want, by a girlfriend who just left him, John Cade is going nowhere fast. The wine distributor he works for just had a major theft, which has left the company in turmoil and financial crisis. Cade spends all his time putting out fires and trying to appease his angry clients. His boss is a jerk and many on his staff are incompetent. When a valuable order goes wrong, he must hand deliver several cases of wine to a wealthy, eccentric client. He is given a gift for his special effort, and his ordinary life takes a strange and surrealistic turn as he enters a world of monsters and magic. Surviving will have to be his first priority.

Set in Southern California, among busy freeways, beautiful girls and quirky characters, the listener can almost feel that warm California sunshine. Martin, Cade’s German friend, mangles English phrases while he serves beer, bratwurst, and relationship advice.

This inventive story is a teaser, just the first few chapters of what one hopes will be a book. This makes it hard to review, however. While certainly entertaining, it is neither a short story, nor a novella, there are too many loose ends and unresolved plot developments for either. It is, rather, a first installment. That said, it is a promising start and the listener will certainly want to follow the author’s progress with the story towards the next installment or the book itself.

P.J. Ochlan reads the story with great skill and his accents and character voices are a thing of beauty. He is one of those performers you will want to follow, searching for books he narrates, just to listen to more.

The Seventh Lane will entertain the listener for the two plus hours of audio. Well performed and developed; it unfortunately leaves us hanging. Know this before you begin and you’ll want to follow Ochlan, looking forward to the rest of the story when it arrives.

Audiobook provided for review by the author.… (más)

California is in the throes of the Kyon pandemic, an infectious viral disease that turns those afflicted into a form of werewolf creature. Lucy Lowell, known as the Werewolf Whisperer, and her compatriot, Xochitl (Socheel) Magaňa, have used Lucy's ability to control and domesticate the less wildly afflicted to gain fame from those who seek to protect loved ones afflicted with the disease from the mobs who see total isolation and eradication of all werecreatures as the only answer. Lucy's story of becoming the Werewolf Whisperer originates two years earlier on the day the pandemic suddenly began, when as an officer in the LAPD Animal Cruelty Task Force in the midst of a raid on a dogfight just outside Xochitl's bar, she is faced with her LAPD partner suddenly transforming next to her. This was a very interesting and somewhat original view of the werewolf mythology as a viral plague and the two strong female protagonists who fight and protect both the afflicted and those overreacting or taking advantage of the infestation. However, the reader must concentrate on keeping track of the story as it alternates chapter to chapter from Lucy and Xochitl's current hurdles in instructing, defending and assisting new werewolves and their families to the origin story of tragedy and perseverance that brings these two women to becoming a team. Even though I could see how this back and forth storytelling held back surprising revelations from the earlier timeline, a more linear story timeline would be less confusing to potential readers.… (más)