Peppermint Hot Chocolate by BooknerdMiss
Explicit | 16k | Complete
Warnings: None
Pairings: Harry/Remus/Sirius
Tags: Smut, threesome, mates
Summary: While taking refuge from the cold in a cafe, Remus Lupin stumbles upon an alluring young man that smells like his mate. But he already has a mate waiting for him at home. What is a werewolf supposed to do?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706576/chapters/3633566

This is such a cute little fic. It's only four chapters but I often find myself going back to re-read it.

If I had to score it - 5/5

 

Ok, OP. I'll give you a chance you probably don't deserve.

This links to a userguide for new members. Read it and browse links it contains.

First thing, recommendations for fanfics should go in the Review Board. You posted this in the Library subsection.

 

Thank for the advice, I'll remember to post in the Review Board next time <3 <3

 

See spoiler for formatted thread starter

Spoiler

Title: Peppermint Hot Chocolate
Author: Booknerdmiss
Rating: M. Do we go higher?
Genre: Smut
Status: Complete
Library Category: Restricted Section
Pairings: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin; Remus Lupin/Harry Potter; Sirius Black/Harry Potter; Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/Harry Potter
Summary: While taking refuge from the cold in a cafe, Remus Lupin stumbles upon an alluring young man that smells like his mate. But he already has a mate waiting for him at home. What is a werewolf supposed to do?
Link: Ao3

We're starting off with Remus Lupin wandering into a coffee shop, and meeting Harry Potter. Who smells exactly like Sirius Black. Remus makes no mention of Harry looking like, or smelling like, James, which I have to assume means they've never met. A bold choice for an AU, because changes that far back should have large changes on the timeline. Except it turns out that the divergence (apart from the obvious) was that Remus went to Ravenclaw. I still would have thought Sirius might do a double take at Harry, looking like his dorm-mate, but I haven't met the adult kids of my old school friends, so I wouldn't know myself.

Lupin meets a "short boy with oddly colored hair; blue mixed with slate mixed with lavender; that covered one large lapis lazuli colored eye"... Over the top anime protagonist looks aside, this isn't stellar descriptive writing. It does perfectly describe the colours, but it doesn't flow at all. The biggest offenders are the doubling of 'mixed with...', and 'colored' - I assume most readers would understand that the strange boy doesn't actually have precious gems for eyes, but at the same point, I probably shouldn't make assumptions.

This overly descriptive writing continues - everything is said 'adverbly', and every noun has an attached adjective (maybe a slight exaggeration, but not by much). We also continue to have anime protagonists, with everyone having at least one Z or X in their name, funky hair colours, and glittering jewels. Looking through the tags, it looks like the author just turned the story into a crossover because they wanted more characters.

Harry acts like a archetypal schoolgirl - fisting his hair, hot blushes,, and gasping at this extraordinary man's physique. There doesn't seem to be much of canon Harry in him, to be honest.

I know this is part of the werewolf mate thing that's basically cross-fandom, but the casual touching and grabbing seems a bit out of place. Flirty behaviour with a waiter/ress isn't always unacceptable... But wrapping your arm around them to make them stay at your table crosses a bit of a line. And then Harry's parents being completely okay with him going on a date with two older men - again, it seems strange.

That's the end of chapter 1, and I have no desire to read further. That said, I've skimmed through chapter 2 (ignoring chapter 3, because this is a slash PWP).

The writing... isn't terrible. It could do with some tightening up, and a maybe a second pair of eyes to beta read, but I've read worse (and put up worse for review) myself. The author does get bogged down in overly descriptive passages, and could probably do with either more or less time with a thesaurus, I can't actually decide. It's not pleasant to read, and a lot of the formatting can be wrong:

You'd be forgiven for thinking Harry is saying the first and last. He's not. But his actions follow Sirius' dialogue, which makes it a bit harder to follow along with.

Fork/utensil/fork stands out as bad, never mind that Remus is fellating mashed potatoes and enjoying their 'creamy taste', the rest of it follows along pretty simplistically. It doesn't leave much to the imagination, but is probably should - the writing tells you what happened, and how everyone reacted, without leaving anything for you to infer. This continues with minor PoV shifts - you get an over the shoulder view from each of the characters, giving their thoughts and then jumping to the next, and the removal of the limits this would put on the author also seems to remove any tension... We know they're going to fuck, and they all want to, but a little bit of teasing wouldn't go amiss.

Harry's passivity is annoying, and inconsistent. He swings between turning up early, booking a table, espousing radical views on werewolves, and then shrinking into himself and blushing. Very reminiscent of the standard "hurt/comfort abused!Harry" tropes.

If you're into it, I guess there's probably worse? But in a fandom as large as Harry Potter, I'm sure there's better. I have no desire to read the author's other works, or to explore more of the pairing/fandom/common tags.

1.5/5, because their grasp on written English could have been worse. But rounded down to 1 because this isn't Harry Potter fanfiction: There's no magic, and any of the characters could have been replaced without the story really suffering.


- Earthie, aim to give an actual review of why you liked the story. not just "it's cute". Is the plot progression good? Is everyone in character? Does it make decent explorations of things mentioned in canon, or just come up with some decent lore by itself?

 

The plot of this story is simply weird. I'm not going to rate it because I know that no matter how good the writing was, I could never get into this. But seriously OP, it's called class. Get some please.

 

You first, my love. ^.~