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 . . .
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley, this does not affect my opinion of this book or the content of my review.
It has been a long few months as my previous post noted and that created the blogging slump to end all previous slumps. I have a number of books that I embarrassingly flaked out on because I just couldn’t seem to find any gumption to do anything. I won’t say this book has changed everything, but the blurb and teaser chapters did give me enough of a chuckle to pull the blanket off my head, crawl out of the blanket fort, and ask and give it a shot. So I respectfully suggest this book is worth 137 stars, because I laughed so much, so take that into consideration as I squee my way through the ridiculousness.
This book is a spin off series from Laurenston’s bawdy and hilarious Pride series which ended with the book Bite Me (turns out I never did review it though I have read it 8 times now-was kind of perturbed by the end of the series, but I did review the next to the last). This one starts a few years after that and there are some pretty hilarious cameos from fan favorites from that series, particularly Hannah “The Destroyer of Worlds” (super great to see she found her center) and Dee-Anne Smith (who is handling what has come up exactly the way I would have expected). If you haven’t read that series I don’t think the cameos are distracting and that series probably isn’t necessary to read this one, but I do highly recommend it.
Anyway, premise of the original series is that shifters wander among us in semi hiding, publicly living their lives but hiding what they are. They have cultures and packs and their own sporting teams (DNA testing made that necessary), and hilarious shenanigans. Once the series got rolling there was a whole arc about human big game hunters who know about shifters and like to hunt them ala The Most Dangerous Game. The last couple of books introduced us to the most volatile and separate shifter species-the always entertaining HONEY BADGER! And then it closed the arc and broke my heart forever.
This series jumps back on the Honey Badger train and I can’t be more thrilled, especially since it features siblings so we know were are in for a romp with characters we have already gotten to know and enjoy.
Plus, Laurenston pairs our honey badger heroine with a bear shifter, and if I have to have a second favorite shifter it has to be bears…or at least bears as Laurenston writes them. Thoughtful, serious, honey loving bears!
Basically, this book hits all my high points. Women who have lives, families, and friends outside of the love interest. A cast of characters who actually matter instead of card board cutouts that interact around the main couple. Fun, excitement, and bawdy foul mouthed banter. A couple who gets to know each other some before just hopping into bed. And two main characters who don’t have to sacrifice themselves or change to have each other and the lives they want.
Basically it is pretty much perfect for me. It opens up the world into new and interesting directions so that the series doesn’t have to get stale, and it does so in a way that the new characters can bump along aside of the old ones without either set feeling shoehorned together. The only thing that disappoints me is that the next book and main character hasn’t been released yet. All I can say is that if you have’t read Shelly Laurenston yet, and you like ridiculous over the top hilarity, sarcasm, and a bit of gratuitous violence, well you just don’t know what you are missing because this author is phenomenal…like I said at the start, 137 stars and I will not budge from that.
...Burns Through Her Bookshelf 