I didn't expect to love this as much as I did!
I was putting off reading this book because I'm usually not a reverse harem reader and the cover looks very old school paranormal romance stock photo. But this was a clear case of "don't judge the book by its cover".
This is a wolf-shifter omegaverse reverse harem romance novella with very pronounced gender role reversal trope. Fmc is an alpha, there are 3 omega mmcs, and there are other female alphas in the story. There was no mention of mpreg, which I know would make people wary against omegaverse novels with male omegas. So if you worry "oh no, will there be mpreg?" - there wasn't.
This is also a medium spice story, I'd rate it at 3, which also surprised me after reading several paranormal / monster novellas where spice dominated over plot and character development. This book definitely reads closer to a romance than erotica, which to me, is a plus. (The licking scene was damn hot tho.)
The characters have distinct personalities, which is often my biggest worry against RH novels. Rye is a "hide the pain with smile" type, Torin is shy and anxious, and Owain is a golden retriever himbo. I must admit I liked Rye the most because I just love a good "sad clown" archetype, a character who pretends to be carefree and funny to cover their pain and trauma, and I swear these are rare, mmcs default to "silent and brooding" rather than hiding behind a mask of a funny guy for some reason.
Briar herself is a wounded bird character, someone who had been hurt, cast out and nearly died in the past (she is indeed blind in one eye as the cover suggests as the result of the past events) and because of that she's mistrustful and struggles with lack of self-esteem. I always enjoy fmcs who are suspicious of others when they have a reason to - she's not pointlessly paranoid, and she's not unreasonably naive, a perfect middle.
There's a lot of wolf-shifter politics going on that give Briar a reason to suspect someone might want to get rid of her.
There are 2 sub-plots except the main romance, one related to explaining what happened to Briar's dead brother and another with a suspicion someone will try to take over the pack and get rid of Briar. In the end, it all wraps up nicely.
The only downside I feel was that the ending was a bit too rushed, and I really wanted Briar and Rye have a heart to heart where she clears up the issue that she's not a replacement for her mother.
Oh, and it's in 3rd person present tense rotating pov between the 4 main characters. Idk if this is a thing because I'm also reading another omegaverse novel that's in 3rd person present and I swear before I've only seen 3rd person past or 1st person present. 3rd person present takes some time to get adjusted to.
I really liked the gender role reversal elements where Briar was more blunt, stoic and aggressive when needed, while the omegas were seductive or bashful.
I regret waiting this long to pick it up because I simply devoured the last 50 pages of it and I swear I always get bored midway books and rarely I feel this rush to finish! Truly, good job. Such a shame that gender role reversal stories are rare and even rarer for them to be also written well. This one was great. Among sloppily edited self-published novels, this one stands out: reads smoothly, no visible typos, no pointless content padding with fluff. Fully recommend if you are into the trope or want something that is different instead of just pretending to be.