Adrian is outraged when he learns that his brother and pack alpha, Kade, has arranged for him to live with a lion-shifter pride in order to protect him from Olson, a wolf who hates him and plans to challenge him. For the next six months, Adrian's supposed to at least consider the possibility of mate bonding with one of the lions. If he doesn't find anyone suitable and isn't happy living with the pride, he can go home. He's sure that will be the final outcome, but then he meets Talan, the pride alpha, and is instantly attracted to him. He and Talan get along well, but then Olson arrives. Talan's over-protectiveness causes Adrian to question whether a mate bond with Talan would be a good idea.

This was better than Jaynell's Wolf, the other story by this author that I've read, but it still wasn't very good. I do think it could have been decent...if the author had been consistent with her world and character details and considered the ramifications of all of them. And if the editing had been better.

Okay, so readers were told that wolves were the more primal shifters, living simply and having sex with anyone they might potentially want to mate bond with. Lions, on the other hand, loved luxury and tended to take things more slowly where mating was concerned, because going too quickly could result in bloodshed if their inner lions accidentally started viewing their potential mates as prey.

That's all well and good, except that's not how Kell wrote Adrian and Talan's relationship. Talan's idea of taking things slow was kissing but no groping (sort of), for all of a couple days. Then he decided that his lion was fine with Adrian, and they should just go ahead and have sex. And here I thought they'd go on dates, talk about each other's lives, that sort of thing. At best, Talan asked Adrian a little about his job, and that was it. I have no clue what, if anything, Talan did when he wasn't roaring at the male members of his pride for looking at Adrian too long. While I liked the part at the end where Adrian told Talan that the two of them could only work out as a couple if Talan could learn to trust him and believe that he could take care of himself, it would have had much more power if he and Talan had actually known each other better.

Then there was the biting. Talan's pride freaked out when Adrian bit Talan to mark him (and made absolutely no effort to warn Talan before doing it, which seems like a supremely dumb thing for someone to do to a potentially volatile shifter). One of the pride members called it a “wolf sex thing,” so I figured that lions didn't do that sort of thing. But then Talan and Adrian had sex and Talan bit hard enough to draw a lot of blood (again, without giving any warning beforehand), leaving me really confused. Why had Adrian's bite been such a big deal? And, considering the whole “lions have to take things slowly so they don't accidentally eat their potential mates” thing, shouldn't Adrian have freaked out when Talan suddenly bit him that hard?

The story's entire setup was paper thin. Adrian's insistence that he couldn't live with lions and couldn't imagine mating with one of them didn't last longer than it took for him to drive to Talan's home. The next bit of “conflict” that Kell introduced was Adrian's fear that he'd never get to run with his pack again, but even I could have told him that probably wasn't the case. Sure enough, that problem evaporated after he mentioned his fear to Talan. Then there was Olson.

Now we're entering spoiler territory: I have to wonder how someone could be

I'll wrap this up by talking about the editing. There wasn't much in the way of misspellings - I noticed one instance of Talan's name being spelled “Talon” - but there were issues with repetitiveness. A character would walk in and say something, and a moment later another character would come and say basically the same thing. Kell's naming decisions were also unfortunate, unless the plan was to make all the lions indistinguishable from each other (which may have been the case, since even Adrian found himself thinking that he couldn't tell them apart). Talan and all six of his sisters had names starting with T.

There were instances of incorrect punctuation (“'Yeah, but how does teaching little girls karate translate into ripping a man’s throat out.'” (47) – needs a question mark), and Kell's usage of commas bugged me. One example: “The thought that the man was hedging his bets about leaving, rubbed Talan wrong.” (21) As far as I know, that didn't need a comma. Also, after such a big deal was made about lions being in prides, not packs, it was a little odd when Talan thought about the lions' mansion being the “pride of the pack” (14).

I could go on, but I'll stop there. All in all, this wasn't great, but I've read worse, and it helped that I went into it not expecting much more than some fluff with a bit of sex in it. I don't plan on reading more in this series, however, and I'm happy that I'm now finished with everything by Kell that I own.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

My Thoughts - 4 out of 5 Unicorns - I really liked it!!!

***Received a copy of the ebook for an honest review from ARCade.

The cover is fits in well with the rest of the series and is beautiful :)

This is the fourth book in the series and is longer than the others containing the whole story.  While you do not have to read the first 3 books, I do highly recommend it because there are references to the first 3 stories in this book.  It will make your characters seen much more robust and answer lots of questions you have about the mentioned mountain lion in those books.  Everything makes a lot more sense now :)  Of course this series is for adults only due to the steamy scenes it contains.

This is Travis’ story (the mountain lion) and Becka’s.  I immensely enjoyed this story, and it was a great start to my day reading it.  I can’t wait to read more in this series!!  This world pulls you in and you want to know more about all of them :)  I wonder what other shifters we will meet in the future :)

I recommend this series to any shifter lover especially if you like wolves, bears, and lions :)

Bree has just decided to give up trying to be a Shifter groupie when a lion Shifter slams into her truck and tells her to drive. Seamus is on the run from hunters, other Shifters, and who knows who else. All Bree knows is that he's compelling, needs her help, and most intriguing of all, wears no Collar ...

Seamus McGuire fears he's gone crazy--feral--and become a killer. His only hope of getting away from the hunters and police on his tail is Bree, a human woman who not only knows a lot about Shifters but has great compassion for them.

Things are more complicated than they seem, however. Seamus is on a mission, to protect those in his care after the destruction of Kendrick's compound of un-Collared Shifters. Seamus must keep it together and keep his charges hidden, but at the same time, he's pulled to Bree as he's never been pulled to a woman before. He needs to prove he's innocent and not crazy before it's too late for himself, Bree, and those he's vowed to protect.

Review

I felt the action overwhelmed the romance in this one. I still enjoyed the story and liked the deveolpment of each character but wanted much more of a love story. 

2.75 stars rounded up

Lion Eyes first published as part of an 8-stories anthology Dark and Damaged before it is finally released separately. Because of that, I ended up reading the 'next' novella first, Bad Wolf.

Now, I don't know whether it is because of that fact or it is because I read this one directly after the much superior Kate Daniels #8, but this story came short even compared to other novellas in this series. I felt like I missed the element of surprise because I already knew that Seamus became a part of the Austin Shiftertown, I knew what Seamus was capable of, even the identity of the 'ghost' haunting Bree's attic.

As for the characters, I didn't find both Seamus nor Bree as inspiring. I struggled to form an attachment to either of them (usually, I liked at least one half of the couple). I did like Bree's mother though. I thought Nadine was a pistol -- definitely held her own even when she had to face Dylan (and that ex-Alpha was menacing!). I bumped the rating for her because she was the fun part of this novella.

And as always, I am not in love with the 'insta-love' part of this novella. The last couple of novellas didn't have that so getting back to fall-in-love with a shifter plot after two days just bummed me up. Even if Bree and Seamus didn't immediately consummate their physical attraction.

It might be a decent addition to the series, but definitely not a favorite of mine.