Book 109, 2020
An Omega for Christmas by L.C. Davis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Around noon, I finished reading An Omega for Christmas, by LC Davis. It's set in the author's "Undercover Alphas" series, but meant to be read as a stand-alone. Story was told in third person, alternating points-of-view from Alpha Detective Dean Garza and Max Redding, a young Omega desperate to find the son who was taken from him twelve years ago.
Dean's life seems perfect--good career, wonderful family, and a nice home, but he always thought he'd have an Omega mate and a family of his own by now. When a social worker drops off a young boy at Thanksgiving and there is nowhere for Gavin to go, Dean agrees to take him home for the weekend. From talking to Gavin, he learns the boy ran from his foster home because he wants to find out about his birth parents. Dean agrees to look into the matter for him.
Meanwhile, Max has very little. His son was taken from him as a baby, his parents disowned him, and he's had to do whatever it takes to survive, including selling himself. Things begin to look up when the latest private investigator he's hired seems to be narrowing down the search for Max's son, and he lands a real job working for a good company. When the Alpha who ruined his life and stole his son away finds him again, Max is terrified. It doesn't help when another Alpha shows up soon after, and Max is convinced that he works for Chris.
Dean didn't expect to imprint on Gavin's father when he found him, but there's just something about Max that resonates with him. Once it's determined that both of them are working towards the same goal, they come up with a plan to remove Chris' toxic presence from Max's life, provide a good home for Gavin, and finally become a real family.
Conventional wisdom says that, in a romance book, the characters should meet in the first chapter. Dean and Max didn't meet until Chapter 18! That didn't impress me much, because fully 2/3 of the story was setting up their meeting, leaving precious little time for the romance to develop. This was billed as a non-shifter story with A/B/O dynamics, but the author didn't do much to explain how his/her particular A/B/O dynamics worked. Alphas mate with Omegas. Okay, but what about Betas? Do they just hook up with other Betas? The main characters were fairly well developed, but Chris was portrayed as a one-dimensional villain. Prostitution was illegal, but brothels weren't? The plot progressed in an orderly fashion, but it slogged along, and reading it became somewhat of a chore. Also, the author didn't seem to understand how "knots/knotting" works, although I reckon s/he can claim artistic license.
Favorite line: "Love isn't about perfection...It's about how much of your heart you can give to someone, not how many things you have."
Vacillating between a two and a three. I'd give it 2 1/2 if I could. It's the holidays, so I'll bump it up to three. :D