Final Heir by Faith Hunter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Faith Hunter did an amazing job with this finale to her Jane Yellowrock series. Jane went out strong. To the end, she took care of her people. All of the loose ends were tied up and even though I’ll miss Jane and Bruiser, I still have the Soulwood novels to look forward to.
Filed under Contemporary, Paranormal
Breaking Badger by Shelly Laurenston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Title: Breaking Badger
Author: Shelly Laurenston
Series: Honey Badger Chronicles, #4
Pages: 368
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
Date: August 31, 2021
Summary:
It’s instinct that drives Finn Malone to rescue a bunch of hard battling honey badgers. The Siberian tiger shifter just can’t bear to see his fellow shifters harmed. But no way can Finn have a houseful of honey badgers when he also has two brothers with no patience. Things just go from bad to worse when the badgers rudely ejected from his home turn out to be the only ones who can help him solve a family tragedy. He’s just not sure he can even get back into the badgers’ good graces. Since badgers lack graces of any kind…
Mads knows her teammates aren’t about to forgive the cats that were so rude to them, but moody Finn isn’t so bad. And he’s cute! The badger part of her understands Finn’s burning need to avenge his father’s death–after all, vengeance is her favorite pastime. So Mads sets about helping Finn settle his family’s score, which has its perks, since she gets to avoid her own family drama. Besides, fighting side by side with Finn is her kind of fun–especially when she can get in a hot and heavy snuggle with her very own growling, eye-rolling, and utterly irresistible kitty-cat…
Review:
As always, I was delighted to get a copy of a Shelly Laurenston book. It doesn’t matter which series or which pen name (G. A. Aiken) she is using, her books are my go-to favorites. And I absolutely love the honey badgers.
Many of my favorite characters showed up in this book. Charlie is one of my favorites and she was true to form. However, it is the number of newish characters that bothered me. Most, if not all, of them were introduced in the last book: Badger to the Bone. The new characters include four tiger brothers and their hybrid sister and four honey badger hybrid female friends. They’re all great characters, but that was too many personalities for me to keep track of all at once.
Did I enjoy the book? Definitely! Will I read it again? Of course. Is it one of my favorites? Afraid not.
One thing for sure. You really need to re-read Badger to the Bone before this one. You will be totally lost otherwise.
This book was sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
View all my reviews
Filed under Contemporary, Humor, Paranormal, Romance
Spells for the Dead by Faith Hunter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Title: Souls for the Dead
Author: Faith Hunter
Series: Soulwood; #5
Pages: 384
Publisher: Ace Books
Date: July 28, 2020
Summary:
Nell Ingram is a rookie PsyLed agent, using the powers she can channel from deep within the earth to solve paranormal crimes. Together with her team, she’s taken on the darkest magic and the direst foes. But she’ll need to tap into every ounce of power she has for her newest case.
Nell is called to the Tennessee mansion of a country music star and finds a disturbing scene–dead bodies rapidly decaying before everyone’s eyes. The witch on her team, T. Laine, knows this can only be one thing: death magic, a rare type of craft used to steal life forces. PsyLed needs to find this lethal killer fast. But when a paranormal-hating FBI agent tries to derail the investigation, they find themselves under attack from all sides.
Review:
This was an absolutely amazing book. At times, I held my breath due to the tension. At other times, I laughed out loud (Marilyn! When you read the book, you’ll understand). I have enjoyed all of these books, and the Jane Yellowrock ones, as well, but this one was my favorite.
Nell has grown so much as a woman and in her power. The relationship with Occam is warm and loving. I want a cat-man. Mud is in some ways a typical pre-teen and in others so exceptional due to her raising and her gifts. Nell definitely has her hands full with her.
All of my favorite characters make an appearance. Firewind, who I don’t want to like, is growing on me. Ricky-bo is also becoming likeable. There are hints of something unnamed going on with other team members and I can’t wait to find out what that is all about.
I have been in a terrible reading slump recently. This book has helped tremendously. It was engrossing, exciting, and so satisfying.
Filed under Contemporary, Mystery, Paranormal, Romance
Summoned to Thirteenth Grave by Darynda Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Title: Summoned to the Thirteenth Grave
Author: Darynda Jones
Series: Charlie Davidson, #13
Pages: 304
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Date: January 15, 2019
Summary:
Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper extraordinaire, is pissed. She’s been kicked off the earthly plain for eternity – which is the appropriate amount of time to make a person stark raving mad. But someone’s looking out for her, and she’s allowed to return after a mere hundred years in exile. Is it too much to hope for that not much has changed? Apparently it is. Bummer.
She’s missed Reyes and her daughter, Beep, but now that she’s back on earth, it’s time to put to rest burning questions that need answers. What happened to her mother? How did she really die? Who killed her? And are cupcakes or coffee the best medicine? It all comes to a head in an epic showdown between good and evil in this final smart and hilarious novel.
Review:
There is no way this is the last Charlie Davidson book. It may be the last Grave book and future books may not focus on Charlie and Reyes, but there is still too much story left to tell for the series to be over. I have not heard anything officially, but there has to be a spinoff series focusing on Beep.
Like most, if not all, of these books the ending has a cliffhanger. Don’t worry, the author does a wonderful job of tying up loose ends, but she couldn’t leave well enough alone. One question. She ends the book with ONE QUESTION and I was “Wait! What?” So yes, there has to be a spinoff series.
I loved the book. Charlie is in her normal, snarky glory. I laughed out loud. I almost cried. In other words, a typical Charlie Davidson book. There were plots and subplots which I enjoyed, and they cleared up some issues that I didn’t even know I had. Old characters returned and we lost people I was not ready to lose. And I have to tell you, there is a character reveal that blew my mind!
My only problem with the book is I need a timeline. When did Reyes and Charlie first meet as adults? When was Beep born? How long did Charlie have amnesia? I guess I just need to re-read the entire series . . . and that’s a wonderful thing!
This book was sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Filed under Contemporary, Humor, Paranormal
Midnight Wolf by Jennifer Ashley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Title: Midnight Wolf
Author: Jennifer Ashley
Series: Shifters Unbound, #11
Pages: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Date: April 24, 2018
Summary:
Angus Murray, bouncer for a New Orleans Shifter bar, is sent to round up an elusive, Collar-less Shifter woman, Tamsin Calloway, who is causing trouble for Shifter Bureau, and possesses information they want. If Angus refuses, he risks losing his cub. He finds Tamsin but she’s slippery and not about to be rounded up quietly.
In fact, quiet is nothing Tamsin will ever be. She leads Angus on a wild chase, but he’s determined to bring her in to save his son.
Can Tamsin convince Angus she’s worth helping before she’s locked away by Shifter Bureau, Collared, or perhaps killed?
Review:
This eleventh installment of what I call the “collared shifters” series is wonderful. It included a couple of my favorite characters from previous books: Zane and Tiger. They both had important parts but they did not overshadow the primary characters at all.
Generally when reading a book, I either really like one character or another. In Midnight Wolf, I loved them both. Angus is a collared wolf shifter, who through no fault of his own, lost his mate and his job as second in his Shiftertown. The only thing that brings him any joy is his cub Ciaran.
And Ciaran is the reason I adore Angus. He loves his cub so much and will do anything to protect him and make sure he is safe and happy. He is a wonderful father and does not let his problems affect his son’s life.
And then there’s Tamsin. Tamsin, who can find joy no matter what.
Tamsin, who is a new type of shifter. At least everyone thinks she is.
SPOILER ALERT: small ONE
You find this out in the first chapter anyway, so not really a spoiler.
Tamsin is a fox shifter. No one, including the other shifters, knew her type existed. As far as she knows, there are no other fox shifters left after her father died.
Tamsin is on the run and has been since she was very young. She is not collared and can normally pass as human. Unfortunately, someone at the Shifter Bureau has found out about her and about a secret she knows involving Angus’ dead brother. They want her captured alive, but don’t plan to leave her alive for long.
So, of course, Angus is sent to find and capture her.
I can’t say much more without real spoilers, but this is an exciting book. There are really bad guys and really good guys. New characters are introduced that I cannot wait to see again in later books.
And there is a romance. If any two people deserve a happily-ever-after, it is Angus and Tamsin. Since this book is a paranormal romance, they do get there happy ending and it was wonderful. This book just made me feel good.
Oddly enough, I normally state unequivocally that series books should be read in order. There are a number of references to backstories in this book, so it would be better to read the rest of the series first. However, Midnight Wolf does a better job than most as a standalone novel.
I rarely give a book five stars, but this one deserves every star. Tamsin and Angus are wonderful characters and I am glad they found each other.
This book was sent to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.
Filed under Paranormal, Romance
Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Title: Hot and Badgered
Author: Shelly Laurenston
Series: Honey Badgers, #1
Pages: 433
Publisher: Kensington
Date: March 27, 2018
Summary:
It’s not every day that a beautiful naked woman falls out of the sky and lands face-first on grizzly shifter Berg Dunn’s hotel balcony. Definitely they don’t usually hop up and demand his best gun. Berg gives the lady a grizzly-sized t-shirt and his cell phone, too, just on style points. And then she’s gone, taking his XXXL heart with her. By the time he figures out she’s a honey badger shifter, it’s too late.
Honey badgers are survivors. Brutal, vicious, ill-tempered survivors. Or maybe Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan is just pissed that her useless father is trying to get them all killed again, and won’t even tell her how. Protecting her little sisters has always been her job, and she’s not about to let some pesky giant grizzly protection specialist with a network of every shifter in Manhattan get in her way. Wait. He’s trying to help? Why would he want to do that? He’s cute enough that she just might let him tag along—that is, if he can keep up.
Review:
It’s been four years since Laurenston’s last shifter book Bite Me and it seems much longer. I was so disappointed when I heard she was not writing anymore books in the Pride series. Make no mistake, I love her dragons and crows, but I ADORE her shifters. This new book is listed as the first in a new series, but it is actually connected to the Pride series which makes it even better.
The best I can tell, Hot and Badgered takes place about seven or eight years after Bite Me. Several characters from the Pride series show up in this book and others are mentioned. As I say time and again, yes, you can read these books as stand alones, but I don’t recommend it. That goes for this book as well. There are plot points that just will not have as much impact if you don’t know the history of the characters.
Having said all that, Hot and Badgered, is wonderful. I had a hard time keeping the sisters straight at the beginning, but they have distinctive personalities and shifter traits. There was one aspect about their shifted forms that bothered me because it contradicted the earlier books, but it was explained later on and actually supported a major thread of the story. It’s so hard to talk about the best parts of the book because of spoilers.
Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan is a wolf/honey badger hybrid. She is far too laid back for anyone to believe she is a badger until she’s not. Don’t piss her off. She and her sisters are dangerous.
Berg is a grizzly and all bear. He’s protective and seems more stable to me than other grizzly shifters. His personality seems more polar than grizzly. And you can tell I am a fan of these stories because that actually makes sense to me. And let me tell you, Charlie needs someone stable in her life.
I can’t really recommend this book if you are not already a Pride series reader. I think you will lose so much of the story if you don’t already understand the shifters’ world. If you are a fan, I don’t have to recommend it. I know any reader of Laurenston will be at the bookstore when they open to get this next installment in her world of shifters.
Now, when is the next book due out?
This book was sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Filed under Contemporary, Humor, Paranormal, Romance
Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Title: Burn Bright
Author: Patricia Briggs
Series: Alpha & Omega, #5; Mercy Thompson, #15
Pages: 384
Publisher: Ace Berkley
Date: March 6, 2018
Summary:
They are the wild and the broken. The werewolves too damaged to live safely among their own kind. For their own good, they have been exiled to the outskirts of Aspen Creek, Montana. Close enough to the Marrok’s pack to have its support; far enough away to not cause any harm.
With their Alpha out of the country, Charles and Anna are on call when an SOS comes in from the fae mate of one such wildling. Heading into the mountainous wilderness, they interrupt the abduction of the wolf–but can’t stop blood from being shed. Now Charles and Anna must use their skills–his as enforcer, hers as peacemaker–to track down the attackers, reopening a painful chapter in the past that springs from the darkest magic of the witchborn…
Review:
It’s hard for me to believe I read my first Mercy Thompson book in 2012. It seems like I have known Mercy forever and yet it also seems like they are brand new. I love Mercy’s world and by extension, Charles’ and Anna’s world. When I read my first Alpha & Omega book, it was simply because it related to Mercy. I didn’t realize how much I would come to love them in their own right.
These two series are so interwoven I can not understand how anyone could read one without the other. There are numerous references between them that are not essential to understanding the stories, but certainly add to both. Burn Bright is no exception.
This book takes place immediately after the last Mercy Thompson book, Silence Fallen, and that situation explains why Bran has left the pack in Charles’ hands. Bran, oh Bran! I love you, but sometimes I want to slap you upside the head. Of course, I am certain my hand would come back without any fingers if I tried it, but I really think you need it.
Anyway, Bran is in charge of most, if not all, of the werewolves in the United States. His immediate pack consists of wolves who are too dangerous to live outside of his immediate supervision. These can be some scary wolves. However, we find out in this book that there are even more dangerous wolves called wildings. They are so damaged that they cannot even be part of Bran’s pack.
And someone is hunting them.
It is left up to Charles and Anna and a few of the other wolves to protect the wildings and find the bad guy. And this is where it gets interesting. One of the wolves who is helping is Bran’s mate Leah. No one likes Leah and that includes Bran to a certain extent. She is disliked in both the Mercy books and the Charles and Anna books. She just has that type of personality.
In this book, however, we find out so much more about Leah . . . and I’m going to leave it at that.
I did not see the ending coming. It worked. It was perfect. But I really didn’t see it coming.
And now I want the next book! Storm Curse, a Mercy book, is due out in May of 2019 AND I CANNOT WAIT!
This book was sent to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.
Filed under Contemporary, Mystery, Paranormal
Lake Silence by Anne Bishop
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Title: Lake Silence
Author: Anne Bishop
Series: The Others
Pages: 416
Publisher: Ace
Date: March 6, 2018
Summary:
Human laws do not apply in the territory controlled by the Others–vampires, shapeshifters, and paranormal beings even more deadly. And this is a fact that humans should never, ever forget . . .
After her divorce, Vicki DeVine took over a rustic resort near Lake Silence, in a human town that is not human controlled. Towns like Vicki’s have no distance from the Others, the dominant predators that rule most of the land and all of the water throughout the world. And when a place has no boundaries, you never really know what’s out there watching you.
Vicki was hoping to find a new career and a new life. But when her lodger, Aggie Crowe–one of the shapeshifting Others–discovers a dead body, Vicki finds trouble instead. The detectives want to pin the man’s death on her, despite the evidence that nothing human could have killed the victim. As Vicki and her friends search for answers, things get dangerous–and it’ll take everything they have to stay alive.
Review:
I have been waiting forever for this book. FOREVER! Okay, it’s only been a year, but I’m talking about a The Others book, so any time I have to wait is too long. Was it worth it? Oh, yeah. It’s not the book I was expecting, but it was still wonderful.
I have been a fan of this series since I found Written in Red on the “new book” shelf at my local library. I immediately bought my own copy and have it and the rest of the series in both ebook and audio format. Can you tell I love them?
Anyway, I was sad to realize last year that Etched in Bone was the final book in Meg’s and Simon’s story arc. Everything was tied up well, but I love the Lakeside Courtyard. This book, Lake Silence, goes in a different direction, but The Others I have grown to love are still represented.
The only shifters with a strong part are the Crowgard, Aggie in particular. Let me just say, I love Aggie . . . even when she is complaining about squishy eyeballs. The Crows are some of my favorite characters.
The true representatives of The Others in this book are the Sanguinati. They run the town of Sproing (and don’t you just love that name?), even though the humans don’t realize it. They think all of The Others are “out there”, not in the village itself. In this book, they certainly find out how wrong they are.
And that brings me to the major difference between this book and the previous ones. The humans have a much larger part. The main character is Vicki DeVine who runs The Jumble – a local B & B. A large part of the book is written from her point of view which really put a different feel to the story. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t what I expected.
And finally, this isn’t the book I was expecting. The previous book set things up to follow another village which has a Wolf sheriff and a human deputy. I really thought that was going to be the next book. This one was a surprise. I enjoyed it. It’s a really good book, but not the one I was hoping to read. Of course, that means I still have that story to look forward to. It has to be written at some point, right? Right?
As I say in all of the reviews I write which involve series, read the other books first. You will enjoy this one so much more because all of the world building has been done in previous books. Regardless, you want to read this book. I am already anxious for the next one and it’s going to be a long wait I know. -sigh-
This book was sent to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.
Filed under Mystery, Paranormal
I know it’s been a few weeks since I have posted, but I have a good reason. My dad died on April 2nd. It wasn’t unexpected, but this blog was no where on the list of things I had to deal with. On that note, it feels wonderful to get back to normal, such as it is.
I am still reading the Sept Dragons by Katie MacAlister and loving them. I am finally to one that I had not read before which makes it even better. Aoife (EE-fuh) is human but has accidentally acquired a magic ring. Kostya, who has to be the grumpiest of all dragons is her mate, although he won’t admit it.
There are Star Trek references in this one, but that is not where I am going to focus today.
Aoife’s feelings are hurt because she believes Kostya is only interested in her because she owns the ring. He is defending himself and in all honestly doing a good job of it. And that’s when Aoife gets mad.
“Of course I’m not,” I snapped. “And stop being reasonable when I’ve got hurt feelings.”
That is right up there with “Don’t confuse me with facts.” and “Listen to what I mean, not what I say.” And yes, I have used both of these myself.
Anyway, there are only three more books so far in this series and I think I’m going to take a break. I received two new books this week, one I purchased and one to review, and I think I will give them a try.
I will definitely come back to the Sept Dragons soon. That’s a guarantee!
“Quote-Tastic Monday” is a meme hosted every Monday on Herding Cats & Burning Soup. Head on over there to see what everyone else is posting about this week.
Filed under Contemporary, Humor, Paranormal, Ramblings, Romance
I am reading another of the Sept Dragons however. This is the first one that is not about Aisling Grey, so I guess that is why there is a dearth of Star Trek references. –sigh–
It really is a good book though and like all Katie MacAlister books, it is definitely funny. So without further ado . . . the quotes.
Gabriel and May are newly mated and in his opinion May can do no wrong. Drake, the dragon who is mated to Aisling, knows better however. He tells Gabriel,
“She’s a female American. No doubt you will soon understand the true depth of hell she can put you through.”
And, of course, I have to include something about the demon in dog form, Jim.
Several of the dragons are fighting. This is nothing new. It’s almost a constant occurrence in this book. Aisling has just told Jim to stop them.
“Stop them how? You want I should pee on them or something?” Jim asked Aisling.
Which apparently was a good idea because
The threat of urination had more effect than all the pleading in the world. En masse the dragons hastily got to their feet, dirty, bleeding, and furious, to a man.
And so, my contribution to the Quote-tastic Monday annals. Enjoy!
“Quote-Tastic Monday” is a meme hosted every Monday on Herding Cats & Burning Soup. Head on over there to see what everyone else is posting about this week.
Filed under Contemporary, Humor, Paranormal, Romance
Elaine Reads . . . constantly! 