First Disclaimer: I received an advance digital review copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Second Disclaimer: The copy used for this review is an uncorrected proof. The published edition may be subject to further editing and revision. With that in mind, I will not discuss editing, spelling or grammar in this review.
Leather and Lace is a queer, urban fantasy romance between a bratty vampire and a karaoke-loving monster-hunter. In a world much like ours, dozens of species of ‘monsters’ live secretly amongst the human population, with the tacit approval of human governments. Many of them are shapeshifters, so passing for human isn’t usually an issue. Many of them also enjoy the taste of human flesh, which is more problematic. Monsters who start hunting humans are subject to execution in the field without trial. Law enforcement outsources this grizzly duty to private hunters, paying them by the job.
Cash Leroy is one such hunter. Hailing from a long line of hunters, he’s tough and competent, great at tracking his prey and gunning them down. He operates mainly in the small city of Devereux.
After a hunt gone wrong, Cash recruits Dorian Villeneuve, vampire pretty-boy and adorable trash-baby. The two become partners and roommates. The physical attraction between them is undeniable, but Dorian is too broken to believe he deserves or is capable of true love. And Cash is too afraid of losing his best friend to push the matter.
All this simmering erotic tension comes to a head when the two hunters tangle with a pair of murderous weredeer.
Yes, weredeer. I’ll admit, I was amused by that. But it makes a nice change of pace from werewolves. And Cubed does succeed in making the idea of a solidly muscled humanoid with razor-sharp antlers moving at ramming speed quite impressive.
We begin the novel with the weredeer making a kill, immediately establishing one of them is more reluctant than the other. The opening line felt a little awkward to me, but the writing soon settles into a good rhythm. And the initial setup presents a nicely nasty mystery.
Cubed narrates this murder, and others, from the perspective of the victim, tugging at your sympathies and emphasising the senseless cruelty of the killings. In fact, Cubed writes violence throughout the novel as grimy, brutal, and kinetic, creating a vibe of true crime mixed with Hollywood action.
It’s not all one way. The monsters Cash and Dorian kill are also sentient beings with friends and families, their deaths are not clean or consequence-free.
And while the cast of vampires and weredeer is rounded out with mothmen and werewolves, the setting itself didn’t feel gonzo or wacky to me. There are lots of details about the culture, society and economics of monster communities that help to ground the more paranormal elements. The organised crime group which supplies vampires with blood. The vampire church, of which Dorian is a lapsed member. Weredeer bars and shops, where humans asking questions are distinctly unwelcome.
Vampires and other monsters aren’t presented as supernatural, exactly. Instead, they are cousins to humanity, offshoots of the same evolutionary tree. Though why so many of these ‘natural’ species are able to drastically alter their forms—growing wings or claws and gaining or shedding considerable mass, is not explained. Nor was I convinced that vampires could remain secret from the majority of humanity while effectively functioning as an ethnic minority. There are vampire neighbourhoods, public ceremonies at the vampire church, street signs written in vampire languages, a vampire mafia and even the remnants of a vampire kingdom. Not to mention all the shapeshifters running around who have managed to avoid capture by the legions of cryptid-hunters in the USA alone.
However, the real takeaway of the novel is these vampires are not cursed walking corpses. Dorian is a living being who drinks booze more often than blood. Though nocturnal, he can go out in sunlight. Crosses and holy water don’t bother him. He’s a carnivore who preys on burgers and tacos, as opposed to young maidens. I got a definite anime vibe from this long-haired, willowy, pointy-eared, beautiful character with his super-strength and intense emotional vulnerability.
In fact, Dorian is far from the smouldering, honourable, emotionally repressed vampire bad-boy so common in paranormal romances. Shy, sulky, and anxious when out of his depth, which is often, Dorian could tear a grown man apart with his bare hands but avoids old ladies for fear they’ll pinch his cheeks. He wears heart-shaped sunglasses and has an emotional support chihuahua named Dominique, who he dresses up in fancy outfits.
Abandoned as a teenager, Dorian grew up exchanging sex for food, shelter, and affection. He expects rejection at every turn and judges himself worthless, beyond his appearance and sexuality. He can happily flirt and seduce his way through most interactions, particularly with other monsters. But he leaves the emotionally draining task of talking to humans to Cash. Along with the task of paying for drinks and meals. Dorian is something of a princess. Actually, he’s a jittery, angsty mess and I love him for it.
Cash is sweet as well. Yes, he’s good old Texas boy, with the Southern drawl, truck, and bag of guns to go with it. He’s also sensitive, shy with his true feelings and looking for true love; all he really wants is to sing country songs to Dorian and get taken dancing.
Filling out the cast are Cash’s reluctant ex, Max, often the focus of Cash’s frustrated libido. And Marcy, Dorian’s sympathetic but no-nonsense best friend.
The novel switches between two time periods. One where Cash and Dorian take on the case of the weredeer, and one eight months earlier that covers their initial meeting and the forming of their partnership. Cubed makes no attempt to differentiate between the two time periods with chapter headings or notes, you just have to work it out yourself from context. That’s not particularly difficult. But I would have preferred a nice clear differentiation between the two periods. This could of course be changed prior to publication. It’s also possible Cubed made a deliberate choice to keep the separation between the two time periods a little muddy. After all, relationships are messy things where an argument from two years ago feels more recent and important than the events of last week. It’s definitely a fun relationship to explore. The more I read, the more I was won over by Cubed’s writing style.
There’s entertainingly awkward flirtation.
“You can’t trick me into going square dancing with you,” Dorian said, letting his mind wander out of his mouth before saying something foolish. “This is some kind of bizarre Texan form of entrapment, and I won’t stand for it.”
Truly exquisite descriptions of painful emotions.
There it went again—the way this conversation turned sharp no matter how many times and in how many ways Dorian tried to fix it. To redress it, smoothing its edges and ironing its creases. Cash always pushed for an answer, and Dorian never had one that satisfied him.
And some nice descriptions of the landscape and action scenes.
“The full moon poured into the woods in silver ribbons that tumbled in through the spaces between the branches overhead.”
“…ran forward with a skull empty of all thought or intuition until his hooves tasted sky.”
Not to mention, this is a romance novel and Cubed does not shy away from portraying the occasional steamy scenes in some detail. We’ll keep it clean here:
“…shared breath on their lips. At that moment, Dorian felt like…air. Smoke.”
But be ready for a few blushes if you read through the whole story.
I was initially attracted to this book by the series title—Southern Gothic, a subgenre that has fascinated me since True Blood first sauntered onto TV screens in 2008. The cover—a neon heart drenched in darkness, didn’t hurt either. But I stayed for the awkward, will-they-won’t-they romance, and the weaponised emotions.
If you enjoyed True Blood or Grimm or if you liked Supernatural but would have preferred the protagonists to have been boyfriends instead of brothers. If you like a good romance with lots of painful feelings or monster-hunting with a side-order of guilt and tragedy. This is the book for you.
Julia Kitvaria Sarene
Jennie Ivins