Tag: shifter series

Review of Almost Paradise (Pine Hollow Wolves #1) by Caitlin Ricci

Rating: 4 stars

Liam Glass is on a errand for the Alpha of his pack, Sampson.  His mission?  To buy gifts for  Evangeline, Sampson’s twin sister and equally powerful wolf.  With him are his two young Neapolitan Mastiffs, Lucy and Ethel.  As he is finishing his business at the jewelry shop they frequent, a frazzled man enters with his young daughter.  The stranger is looking for work when his daughter notices the dogs with squeals of joy.  Everything about the man and his daughter speaks to Liam’s inner wolf and his need to protect them both.

Travis and his daughter, Hannah, have been left in dire financial straights after paying off the lawyers in his custody case. After winning his case, Travis was forced to sell everything he owned to pay the bills.  All his attempts to find a job have met with failure when he and Hannah walk into a shop on their way back to the hotel. When an attractive customer in the shop offers Travis hundreds of dollars to watch his dogs for the weekend, he accepts the offer without question as it means a roof over their heads and food to eat however temporary the security is for their small family.

When Sampson calls and orders Liam immediately to leave the city on pack business, Liam uses his need for someone to care for his dogs as a means to aid Travis and Hannah without offending the man’s pride.  Then he realizes that Hannah can see his true self and everything changes. Liam must protect Hannah and tell Travis the truth.  But will Travis be able to accept the fact that Liam isn’t human and cost Hannah the security she needs?

Almost Paradis is a short story full of neat twists on wolf shifters and serves as a great introduction to characters in the new Pine Hollow Wolves series.  Where to start? Liam and his pack are chock full of intriguing characters  in a pack structure that appears to be  a little different from those  I have gotten in other shifter books.  For starters their Alpha, Sampson, has a twin sister who is he equal in power, dominance, and statue. And while the author  doesn’t come right out and say it, I believe the Alpha and his sister are both black (a diversity lacking in other shifter  tales).  She is also “the tallest woman” Travis has ever seen with an outrageous love of jewelry and sense of humor.  I can’t wait to get more of her character and her brother’s if she is anything to go by.  I also fell in love with Liam as well.  Who wouldn’t love a wolf shifter with two Mastiffs pups he has named Lucy and Ethel and obviously adores? Elegant and comfortable with who he is as a wolf high in status with his pack, he still loves children and falls under Hannah’s spell immediately.  I loved their interaction as well.

Travis is heartbreaking as a father who has given up everything he owns to win custody of his daughter only to see themselves made virtually homeless, with no support system and no income to rely on.  He and Hannah are statistics all too common in today’s economic reality.  Travis is totally believable right down to the bags of washed and unwashed clothing in the hotel room.  Those who might scoff at a father getting into a car with a stranger who offers food, shelter and money have no idea how desperation effects a persons actions.  In this case, Travis got lucky, he and Hannah bring out the protective instinct in Liam as well as feed Liam’s desire to have children.  Then there is Hannah, a totally endearing tot as well as Lucy and Ethel, the Neapolitan Mastiffs with personalities to match their size.

There is no case of instant love here which I appreciate.  It is definitely a case of HFN and Travis asks for certain rights and promises before he agrees to Liam’s proposal.  I was so happy to see that this book serves as a expositional setup for the additional books to come. I will eagerly await the arrival of Pine Hollow Wolves #2 and the chance to reacquaint myself with Liam, Travis, Hannah, Evangeline and the rest.

Cover: Artist Lee Tiffin.  I love this cover.  How cute is the father/daughter duo?  This would be perfect except that the animal on the cover is a Husky and not a wolf.  How could the artist make that mistake I don’t know but it takes the whole cover down several notches.  They should have done their homework, put a wolf on the cover, and then this would have been one of my Best Cover of the Month.

Review of Salad On The Side (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat #1) by Karenna Colcraft

Rating: 3.5 stars

Kyle Slidell’s company offered him a promotion.  Taking it cost him his boyfriend but offered him a fresh start in a new town with a lot more money. Once Kyle gets situated in his new apartment, his life consists of work, home to sleep and more work, making his life very dull and his days repetitive until he looks out his window into the apartment complex communal garden and spies his gorgeous neighbor naked under the full moon.  He has seen Tobias around the building but has never worked up the courage to speak to him or hardly any of his neighbors really.

Tobias Rogan has watched the new tenant with more than usual interest.  Tobias is drawn to Kyle, and because of the attraction he feels along with his past history, he has intentionally stayed away from him. But on a full moon, standing in the garden, Tobias knows that Kyle is watching him,  wants him  and he decides to act on his emotions. Tobias “accidentally” runs into Kyle in the hallway and invites Kyle over the next day under the cover of meeting all the neighbors in the building.  The pot luck will accomplish several things, first to introduce Kyle around while indicating to those at the party that Kyle is under his protection, and the other is to simply get to know Kyle better.

Kyle finds the party awkward, his new neighbors a little on the strange side, and the actions of one new acquaintance hostile until Tobias intervenes in a manner even stranger.  Kyle realizes that there are secrets being kept from him and he  doesn’t like it.  But after being attacked by a wolf in the garden, Kyle wakes up a werewolf and finds out that he managed to move into a werewolf apartment complex and Tobias is the pack alpha.  What is a vegan to do?

Karenna Colcroft had me at vegan werewolf.  I thought that was an hysterical premise and an original one at that.  This story really shines when Colcroft is letting her imagination run quirky little circles around the typical shifter tale. Colcroft’s description of the pack trying to find vegan foodstuffs for Kyle to eat after he shifts for the first time is great.  Flashes of that offbeat take on werewolves throughout the story had me waiting in anticipation as I turned page after page.  Unfortunately, sometimes it appeared and other times it was submerged under too many words, too many repetitive passages and characterizations that felt a little incomplete.

The story is told from Kyle’s POV and while I appreciated his snarky, intelligent nerdlike outlook, I also found parts of his personality hard to believe in.   This includes his reaction to the fact that Tobias and his pack have just ruined his life, which would have been more believable if it had contained more anger and less passive acceptance, especially coming from a man who hours earlier had told Tobias he wasn’t going to have a relationship with someone who was closeted and obviously hiding something from him.  That man, pre werewolf Kyle, I believed in and understood.  I cannot really say the same about werewolf Kyle.  Tobias, pack Alpha, was another problematic persona. Tobias shifted from one type of character to another so fast that I thought he might have some schizophrenic tendencies.  In one scene, he is the mind controlling Alpha, in the next he is tender lover.  Yes, you can have both  in the same character if you make a good case for the changes in attitude, but the author never really did that with Tobias’ character.  To give the author credit, some of that did smooth out towards the end of the book, but it took far to long for Tobias to get there.  In this particular case, it would have benefitted the story to have told part of it from Tobias’ POV to give the reader  greater insight into the character.

Apart from some issues with characterization, I found the wordiness a little excessive, especially towards the middle of the story.  I appreciate that Colcroft is setting the stage for future stories but the constant dialog about pack politics, rules, etc bogged down the narrative.  Other authors have  woven such details into their stories without hitting you over the head with them, and I wish this author had found a way to do that here.  I hope that now which such backstory out of the way, the next book in the series will move forward at a more sprightly pace.  I would like to see more consistency in the characters as well, so their actions match our expectations given what the author has told us about them.  My last quibble? More of the wonderful humor Karenna Colcroft is capable of.  It’s here, from the great premise to scenes found throughout the story.  It is the reason I will come back for more and read the second and third installments of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series.  The good here far outweighs my quibbles and make this book worth your while.

Great cover by Winterheart Designs.

Other books in the series available in eBook from MLR Press, Fictionwise, All Romance:

Salad On The Side (Real Werewolves Eat Meat #1)

Tofurkey and Yam (MLR Holiday Release)

Veggie Burgers To Go (Real Werewolves Eat Meat #3)