Matched to His Bear is the second book in the ‘Dates of Our Lives’ series. This stars Alpha Brad Galway, a lawyer, and human omega Gabe Rafferty, an English professor. This is told in first person through both Brad and Gabe’s pov.

3.5 Stars



The blurbs are usually pretty accurate in telling the plot of the book. This one is not. The first over the top falsehood is that Brad has ‘omegas throwing themselves at his feet.’ He does not. He has one specific bear shifter named Barry, doing that. The second paragraph says Gabe’s luck has changed and it’s ‘onward and upward’ after scenting his mate at the airport. This is also not true. Nothing changes for Gabe except he starts having strange dreams. The fact that the authors wrote a blurb that is overly dramatic and untruthful, also explains some of the scenes in the story which are overly dramatic, so much so, that I rolled my eyes and wondered ‘what were they thinking?” Seriously it was over the top.

This is the second book in the series. I didn’t read the first book, and I don’t feel like I was lost. What I liked about the plot was that it wasn’t all about getting pregnant once meeting their mate. It was about searching for their mate and Brad trying to restrain himself from claiming Gabe in shifter fashion when Gabe was a human and didn’t know that shifters existed. So that is one issue that has to be navigated between the two, that’s after Gabe and Brad finally find each other after the ‘ships passing in the night’ at the airport. Pregnancy didn’t show up until near the end. I never understand why this writing team are so into Alphas and omegas never using condoms. It’s a pretty bad message to send about carelessness. Would they write this way if it was an M/F story? Brad also had to deal with another problem, an Alpha at the den, Barrett, who was pushing his son Barry, to mate with Brad. After Brad mated Gabe, trouble escalated.

Some things I didn’t like: Why was there an over-abundance of ‘B’ names? Were the authors trying to be cute, naming them after ‘Bear’. There was ‘Brad, Barrett, and Barry.’ Toward the end of the book there was one more I think. It was very confusing. And it was confusing between Gabe and Brad’s names too. Why pick two names with four letters out of all the male names available? At least make them more distinct. And why, oh why, did the authors have Gabe try and throw himself into the middle of the battle between Brad and Barrett, not once, but twice? That was absolutely ridiculous, it turned the scene into a farce. Again, I have to ask, what were the authors thinking? Gabe’s reaction didn’t make him look like he cared, it made him look like an idiot that would end up getting not only him, the baby and Brad killed, by distracting Brad. Seriously, it was a bad scene because of Gabe’s reactions. That’s when the authors really lost me and I had to decrease the star ratings.

Once Gabe and Brad meet, they can’t keep their hands off each other. I liked Brad as he tried to understand more about the human world and how to give Gabe what he needed in terms of courting as humans would. Gabe was a mess. He’s this super, clued-in professor when it came to teaching, with students loving his teaching techniques. But Gabe was a failure at private life. It’s like he had a split personality, and I didn’t care for how the authors wrote him. He was like totally incompetent. He was an absolute slob relying on his best friend to clean his home and look after him. Gabe also never cooked. Did he eat out all the time? How much of a salary did he make to eat dinner and lunch out? When he met Brad, Gabe depended on Brad to cook and feed him. It’s like Gabe was some overaged man living at home in his mother’s basement, and his mom did everything for him. I didn’t find it funny or endearing but rather disgusting. I have no idea why the authors wrote him that way, he came across as a user having others do his dirty work.

I’m conflicted on how to rate Matched to His Bear. It’s a good stand-alone and much more interesting than these authors usual mpreg books because it focuses more on the relationship and den dynamics than on the pregnancy itself. But on the other hand, Gabe’s private behavior was annoying, and so were the overuse of the ‘B’ names. Plus, Gabe in the battle scene was way too over the top. I want to give the book 3.5 stars, but since I can’t, I’ll give it 3 Stars. There were too many strange things the authors wrote into the plot that didn’t work.





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