Slow Heat by Leta Blake
I will admit I have never read an omegaverse book. I was a little put off by the idea because male-pregnancy seems like such a baked-in part of the genre (click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about). And it’s an idea I have always found uncomfortable. Like to me there has always seemed to be something sorta fetishising about mpreg. I don’t mean to cast shade on anyone who likes those stories just that the idea sat very uncomfortably on me.
But I needed a light romance read to balance out the other shit going on in my life and one of Blake’s other contemporary romance books is a favourite, so I decided to give this a try. I was pleasantly surprised.
First of all Blake goes to the trouble of building a proper (dystopian) world for her alphas, betas, and omegas that acknowledges the inherent weirdness of mpreg and only 1 gender and all that. Which gives much more scope for a suspension of disbelief. But the real genius of this story is that Blake is using it to explore female oppression and systematic gender bias in our own society through the lens of her other world.
Everything from the simplification of the omega into baby factories, the social stigma around their sexuality, the economic controls placed on them. I also enjoyed that the author acknowledged the emotional toll a out-of-control heat might have on a person. So she takes a silly premise and makes it do good work – although arguably the intended audience already know all this – maybe that is the attraction, seeing their frustrations acted out in another universe.
As to the writing itself, I did not find this book as good as Will & Patrick, it was just nowhere near as tight. The structure was mostly fine. The main problem was that the conflicts set up at the beginning of the story were not the ones that actually became important. In the first few chapters with Jason it is repeatedly stated that the relationship will be difficult because Vale has been alone so long. It sets up a scenario where Vale should be resistant of having his independence curbed, but none of that happens. Vale’s reluctance has nothing to do with that, and he actually never pushes back against Jason. It doesn’t ruin the book, and the tension regarding pregnancy and contraception do provide enough drama, but I spend a lot of the book waiting for something that never came.
The other issue I had was Jason was a bit too unflawed. He never really seems like a 19 year old. Always acting a little too mature in any situation. Again it undermines the age-gap part of the story. And it undermines what his intended arc is meant to be. The author tries to sell it with a tell. But I don’t really feel like Jason profoundly changes his world view based on the actions of the book. I would have liked to see him more hung-up on how things are supposed to be at the begining, so we can see a transformation.
A sweet book but I cant say I have any burning desire to investigate the omegaverse further.
