Tag Archives: shifters

Thrill of the Chase

Book Review of Thrill of the Chase, by Layla Nash

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I downloaded a copy of Layla Nash‘s Thrill of the Chase when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Up-and-coming chef Natalia Spencer has enough on her plate dealing with a struggling restaurant and a corrupt manager selling her out of pantry and kitchen. She doesn’t have time for arrogant customers, even a gorgeous corporate raider in a bespoke suit with muscles that just don’t stop. Until, of course, he buys her restaurant and saves her life. 

Logan Chase, alpha of his lion shifter pride, is intrigued when the feisty chef kicks him out of her restaurant. He’s enraged when someone attacks her. And he’s intoxicated when he finally gets close enough to kiss her. But when he shifts in front of her and his lion comes out to play, he risks losing Natalia forever. 

Natalia just wants to cook and snuggle with a nice guy. Shacking up with a man who’s also a lion means inviting a new level of crazy into her life, along with his unruly brothers, and even her werewolf best friends warn her away. Can she and Logan create a steamy relationship from scratch, or are they a recipe for disaster?

Review:
So, the mechanical writing is fine and I thought the outline of an interesting story was too, but…BUT at one point, in the beginning, I flipped back and forwards between pages and even came to the internet to ensure I had an up to date copy, because I was sure I was missing a chapter or two (or five).

Let me lay it out this way, despite being 130 pages long, there is nothing in the book beyond what is in the blurb, almost literally. Natalia throws Logan out of her restaurant, or at least tells him he can’t eat. He then hires her to cook him a meal, her not knowing it’s him until she arrives. When she arrives he’s already decided to treat her like a mate, she is his mate. There are no interactions between the two of them between the two events and no internal thoughts given to the reader. So, as a reader, I was just like, what? When did that happen? How did that happen?

Then within two days they’re declaring love, making plans to move in with each other, etc. There is no development of a relationship AT ALL.

The closest thing to a plot development is her getting attacked. Because of course all women are victims all the time. And the closest thing to character development is the fact that she’s been some sort of undisclosed victim in the past.

Lastly, as a major point of contention for me, big cats like lions don’t purr. They can’t. They don’t have the connection of small bones that are vibrated to make the sound. They are literally unable to purr, which made Logan’s constant purring a grating inconsistency everytime it happened. I know this is fantasy, so it probably doesn’t matter. But I’m pretty sure this is an oversight on the part of the author and an annoying one.

I did like the characters, even the side ones. I thought Logan’s confused desperation was cute and his brother gave some very sage advice on more than one occasion. And again, the writing is ok. The book isn’t even unfun to read. But it’s no where near developed or fleshed out enough to feel real and substantial.

Book Review of Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls #1), by Amy Green

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I picked up a copy of Amy Green’s Rebel Wolf when it was free on Amazon. It was still free at the time of posting.

Description from Goodreads:
Ian Donovan lives a life on the edge. The bastard son of an alpha, he’s a lone wolf fighting to survive in the Colorado wilds. No pack. No code.

Until the woman showed up.

Anna Gold studies shifters – their secret rituals, their renegade lives. Everyone knows shifters are untrustworthy and deadly, especially in the hard-luck, shifter-only town of Shifter Falls. But Anna has never met a wolf until the day she springs Ian from prison to study him.

Not only is Ian so hot he’s a distraction, he’s definitely dangerous. And he’s the wrong guy to fall for. Because the pack alpha is dead. A new leader must be chosen. An Ian’s three brothers want to kill him for it. No one said life in the Falls was easy…

Review:
This is pretty standard shifter paranormal romance. There isn’t a lot to make it stand out as superb or unusual. But for being bog standard PNR it does what it does quite well. The writing is good, the editing non-distracting, the dialogue smooth, the characters likable and the romance not insta-love (though being so short it doesn’t have a lot of time to develop). What I liked most was that Ian and Anna never played coy, dragging out a lot of misunderstandings and hidden feelings. She was willing to ask the obvious questions and he was willing to give honest answers about his feelings. That was quite satisfying.

As always, I thought the need to make the bad guy threaten to rape the heroine was unneeded. I really don’t understand why authors think they HAVE to make a villain a sexual deviant to make him evil. I mean, being a murder is enough all by its self. But somehow the heroine in such books always has to almost get raped. This is a trope I could do without, but seems to be as expected in the plot as a HEA. It’s so common I’m tempted to call it cliched, and how sad is that?!

For the most part, however, I enjoyed the book and I’d be willing to read more of the series.

Edit: As an aside, concerning the cover, I know it’s a small thing and authors don’t always have a lot of control over it, but when the character has very specific tattoos that are well described and play a part in the book, but the character on the cover has very different, non-related tattoos, readers notice. It’s a disconnect and annoying. Not to mention that the character is described as having longish hair, a beard and prominent scars on his back. People notice these things.

Coexistence

Book Review of Coexistence (Human Hybrids #1), by Clare Solomon

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Clare Solomon sent me a copy of her novel Coexistence for review. There is also a prequel available on her website and a second book available if you sign up for her newsletter.

Description from Goodreads:
Scientists have genetically engineered five human hybrid races known as werewolves, vampires, dragons, sensers and wendigoes. The first four races coexist with humans in relative peace. The fifth one wants to butcher the others and they are getting stronger.

Jaspal ‘Pal’ Khatri is nearly killed and forced to leave his home with a werewolf pack in Oxford, England when the local HyCO group leads a mob of anti-hybrid rioters against them. He travels to the Highlands of Scotland for a fresh start and meets Brand, a werewolf still grieving after the murder of his lover, Kye, a year ago. He and Brand find a dead vampire and Pal is suddenly in the nightmare situation of being accused of the murder. There is a link between this death and that of Kye and Brand works for another branch of HyCO so, to prove his innocence, Pal must join the organisation he loathes and try to ignore his growing feelings for Brand as they work to uncover the real killer. Can they solve the case in time or will they become the murderer’s next victims?

Review:
Umm, no, this did not work for me. It’s too long, provides the same information over and over again, is far too heavy on the tell vs. show, has a ‘love’ that is rejected for ridiculous reasons and then has a sudden and unbelievable turnaround, a mystery that is solved with far too much ease and a second that drags on eternally, a doctor that never doctors and a world with five types of humans that isn’t really explored beyond wendigos bad everyone else good.

Solomon has a good idea here and I liked the characters. The book even starts out really well. But in the end the writing, editing, pacing and plotting wore me down and I was just glad to finally finish it.