It was okay.  I was expecting a little more than just okay, I have to admit, as it was recced to me by a couple of long-time friends, but it just goes to prove that you never know for sure.  :)

Anyway, it's a shifter book and I'm not huge on shifters - except for my avian shifters by Kim Dare.  This is a wolf shifter tale - as if you couldn't tell.  *LOL*  Anyway, there wasn't a whole lot of shifting done but there sure was a lot of sniffing!

One main character, Cooper, is human and the other, Oliver is the wolf shifter. Cooper is also a BSI agent, Bureau of Special Investigations, a sort of secret branch of the FBI.  Oliver is an agent of The Trust, a werewolf governing organization, who is suddenly partnered with Cooper.  I liked the world-building.  It was interesting and I wish we'd had more of it. 

There are missing people, dead and mauled bodies, suspicious folk all in this small town in Maine - I think it's Maine - that reminded me a heckuva lot of the town I see on North Woods Law. There is a alot of investigating that goes on and the case/mystery is engrossing enough, especially for a romance novel.  Cooper and Oliver are thrown into close contact over and over again, of course.  What we see of Oliver that tells us he's a wolf shifter is that he uses his sense of smell a LOT, his eyes glow golden upon occasion, and he's graceful.  Cooper, to me anyway, comes across as a bit of a newbie whose smarts are hidden beneath a layer of dumb. The story is told from Cooper's POV and we spend a lot of time in his head as he asks himself the same questions about the mystery, the relationship, his past, over and over and over again.  Oliver, of course, is hiding something, but what?  I don't know if we ever really find out the extent of his secrets.  It's a series featuring the same couple, so I expect the author is holding stuff in reserve for future books. 

I found myself alternately liking both main characters and being impatient with them - Cooper especially, I guess because it's his POV.  The relationship works for the most part.  Will I continue reading the series?  Probably, but it's not an urgent need.  I think my friends told me it gets better in Book 2, so it's on my radar. 

I am still in search of a gripping contemporary romantic suspense novel/series. 

Now here's the thing.  Julie Garwood is much beloved in Romancelandia so I felt pretty confident in trying her contemporary thrillers out.  And it didn't seem like they HAD to be read in order, so that was a plus as well, seeing as I got volumes 3 and 4 on sale.  Well... I was hoping for more.

In the beginning, it felt like one of Nora Roberts' suspense romances and I'm totally down with that.  But you know what?  It was written in 2002 and it sorta shows its age.  I'm not talking about the flip phones or anything like that, but more an underlying whisper of an attitude?  I dunno, but it bugged me. I never really warmed up to Avery, the heroine and I didn't fell like I saw enough of the hero, John Paul, to really gt to know him.  And I wanted to!  He was far more intriguing.

There were a lot of little things that I found bugged me, things that could have been fixed with a good editor.  For instance, the couple is travelling over a rough back road in their car, windows up, heater blowing and oops... Avery hears the very faint noise of running water - and it's very faint when they pull off the road, roll down the windows and turn off the heater, then the car.  COME ON! 

Now there was a nifty twist at the end that I didn't figure on.  The rest of the twists were pretty much obvious, but, okay, if the book is well written, the characters intriguing, I can live with that. But other than that, the ending was very non-satisfying because Avery and John Paul were NOT TOGETHER when the vanquishing of the bad guys happened.  Talk about a lunchbag letdown! 

Anyway, I'll read the other one I have and probably more in the series if they go on sale, but this sure didn't satisfy my itch for a gripping contemporary romantic suspense read. 

I guess I'm not having much luck with romantic suspense this week.  I DNFed the last one and this one... well, it was just alright.  Nothing exciting really.  Definitely not enough to make me overlook the things that bugged me.

And what were those things?  Well, for one, I was getting a whiff of the misogyny that so turned me off the previous book. While the hero, Reed, did his best to be respectful and look for consent etcetera, his inner thoughts were just a tad too leery for me to be totally comfortable.  When it's the bad guy, it doesn't bother me, but in the hero?  Nope.

Then there was the instalove.  I didn't buy it. 

There was also a scene set in a Wiccan shop that was run by a woman who the author described as 60-ish.  You would have thought this woman was a doddering old fool, just because of her age. I'm here to tell you, (at 62), that we are nowhere near as ready for the home as this woman was depicted.  And maybe I could have glossed over it, but the heroine came across as rather judgmental and mean in her thoughts about the woman.  It was a small thing, but it really irritated me.

And then we came to the end.  I like my thrillers to come to a conclusion. This did not. All of a sudden, the people in danger were rescued, the bad guy got away, the MCs declared their love for each other and decided to move away.  Oh yeah, the bad guy got away.  It was totally unsatisfying. I went online and discovered that book two in the series concerns the brother of the heroine taking up the chase for the bad guy. I have it in my TBR, but honestly?  I'm not that anxious to read it. 

Rhys never lets me down.  Whether it's some adventurous urban fantasy, rockstar dramas or, like this one, a romantic mystery I always enjoy my Rhys reads.  :)

Book two in the Half Moon Bay series focuses on the twin brother of one of the MCs of the first book. In the first book he was not the most sympathetic of characters, but as we delve into his life in this book, we come to understand his whys and wherefores.

While the main characters of West and Angel might be somewhat typical, the rich full-of-himself guy and the hard-working, blue-collar, doing-his-best guy, Rhys infuses them with quirks and humanity and courage and flaws and makes them come alive on the page.

Yeah, there's a mystery involved, but it really takes a somewhat backseat to the relationship between West and Angel.  A relationship I became invested in and with characters I came to care for very much. Main and secondary!  (I really want to know more about West's friend/bodyguard.)

So another great read from a fave author.

Amish Smuggler's Secret: Amish Mystery R...

I enjoyed this sweet Amish romance with a little bit of mystery in it. I voluntarily chose to review this story and I've given it a 5* rating. A few little twists and turns stir it up and it has a good ending.