Review – Wolf Signs by Vivian Arend

Talk about getting your signals crossed…

Robyn Maxwell doesn’t care that her brother has to cancel out on their backcountry ski trip. She can do it alone. The fact she’s deaf doesn’t make her survival skills any weaker. The chance to get away from it all and relax in the Yukon wilderness is just what she’s been craving.

Meeting wilderness guide Keil at the cabin starts cravings of another kind. Keil’s one hot hunk of ripped, tasty male. Now she has to deal with raging hormones as well as strange questions about wolves and mates and challenges to the death.

Keil was trying for a nice reflective retreat before challenging for the Alpha position of his Alaskan pack. He wasn’t planning on meeting the woman destined to be his mate, or finding out she’s not aware she has the genes of a wolf.

Between dealing with his accident-prone younger brother, a deaf mate with an attitude and an impending duel to the death, his week—and his bed—is suddenly full.

Far from the relaxing getaway any of them had in mind…

I am pretty sure that this was the story that first introduced me to Vivian Arend. I was searching for disabled protagonists and it popped up. And since I am an audiologist and fairly fluent in American Sign language it caught my attention.

But Arend’s characters and world building are what kept my attention. These characters were fun and feisty, and Arend packed an enormous amount of characterization and plotting in what is a relatively short book (96 pages). You’ve got the meet-disaster of a Deaf heroine who thinks she’s all alone at a mountain retreat quite literally running smack dab into the hunky hero…while naked. A Deaf heroine who doesn’t know precisely what she is, a hero who can’t use sign language and no interpreter in sight, and a clumsy brother who could inadvertently destroy the world with his accident prone nature. There’s also pack drama and intrigues, but those don’t eclipse a really sweet story about a heroine who finds herself, and finds love.

Overall, this is a satisfying romance and the characterization of Robyn as a Deaf woman was a hit for me, and it definitely got me hooked on Vivian Arend.