Aubrey works security for her Cast. Her uncle, head of the Cast, has been murdered. The Coalition has been called in to investigate. The head of the Bird shifters investigators is Cody, Aubrey's former lover. He tells to butt out, but she does not listen. She finds the perp but ends up in trouble. Will Cody be able to rescue her?

I liked this couple. They are strong separately and together. They butt heads a lot but learn to work together. The world building is good. It sets up the series well. The story is weak as there are more questions than answers. How did the murderer get as far as he did? Why was no alarm raised from where he came? How did he get away with it? Why? There were a few lines about his motive and opportunity, but they felt throwaway at best. I do look forward to reading more of the series.

Raised among humans, Ori Jones only discovered he was an avian shifter six months ago. Unable to complete a full shift until he reaches his avian maturity, he still can’t be sure of his exact species.

But with species comes rank, and rank is everything to the avians. When a partial shift allows the elders to announce that they believe Ori to be a rather ugly little duckling, he drops straight to the bottom rung of their hierarchy.

Life isn’t easy for Ori until he comes to the attention of a high ranking hawk shifter. Then the only question is, is Ori really a duck—and what will his new master think when the truth eventually comes out?

Review

I have mixed feelings about this book but what is done well is done so well I really enjoyed it.

This is an excellent re imagining of The Ugly Duckling. The relationship between the heroes is compelling and a great romance.

However, everything else in this world gets smudged. We get no other characters really. The world seems cruel beyond measure but it can't all be because of things we see.

The tight lens is good but I wanted more world building overall. 

So after my previous read that was so very awesome, I decided I wanted to read something else with shifters. I picked this one because I had heard it was light and fluffy and pretty funny.

My description would probably lean more toward silly. There are definitely some humorous moments and while I'm not normally a fan of puns I do think the sheer amount of different ones used in this book are pretty impressive.

I'm a fan of weird shifters, so the fact that Jay is a blue jay was a big selling point for me. There are going to be other bird shifters popping up as the series continues and I suspect Calvin might be a bird of some sort (I'm leaning toward a cardinal.)

I feel like the author kind of took the easy route by making Jay a foster-kid that was abandoned by his parents as a baby. He had no knowledge of why he was a bird shifter or how it all worked and because of that the reader didn't have that knowledge either.

Overall, this was cute and a touch funny. Not sure that I will continue on with the series unless I see a really great review for the second book.