Title: In the Pride’s Best Interest
Series: Ariel Estates Series, #2
Author: Jessica Lee
Genre: Paranormal Romance / Shifters
Length: Novel (212 pages)
ISBN: 9781607356417
Publisher: Resplendence Publishing (March 6th 2013)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥3 Hearts
Reviewer: Thommie
Blurb: Eli Novak, lion-shifter and Secretary of Ariel Estates has never been more fulfilled. Or more torn and confused in his life. No male has ever heated his blood or crept into his dreams before. Well, except for one. But that was over long before it ever started. So he’s straight, right? He loves women. Always has. So how can this strawberry-blond human male who stumbled onto their land have him questioning everything he ever thought he knew about himself.
Shayne Matthews is lost in the Smokey Mountains when a light in the distance leads the way to what he thinks could be a potential rescue. But it’s a decision that ends up landing him in a cell. Inside a world he never knew existed, fear turns to lust and a whirlwind of an adventure that puts him in the middle of a battle for dominance and power.
When the thirst for blood at Ariel Estates rears its ugly head once more, Eli is forced into a triangle of options where there is no right move. He must choose between his best friend, the human who’s claimed his heart, and what is in the Pride’s best interest.
Purchase Link: http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/m8/558-978-1-60735-641-7–in-the-pride-s-best-interest-ariel-estates-series-book-two-by-jessica-lee.html
Review: Oh my God, what a start! Talk about gripping your attention and stealing your breath away along with your mind from the first chapter.
The second book in the Ariel Estates Series starts with the tried and proved big bang like the first one did. A fast-paced story filled with anticipation, action, and lots of chemistry comes to steal you away for a couple of hours and take you on a ride where big badass lion shifters will fill your senses and make you gasp. What I like most about this series is the fact that the “cats” are mostly very well profiled. They have a very nice balance between their human and animal parts, and their instincts are such that require shifters to remain hidden from the world lest their inner animal surges forward and their secret is revealed.
And it’s precisely that secret the Secretary of Ariel Estates, Eli Novak, tries so hard to protect in the absence of his Alpha and best friend, Silas. But when a lost hiker stumbles upon the Prides lands and trespasses, Eli finds himself in a very peculiar predicament. Having harbored feelings for a male only once and a very long time ago, Eli felt safe in his sexuality until he lays eyes on Shayne. Everything turns upside down and while he makes sure the human is no danger for the pride, Eli can’t stop thinking of him.
I really liked how the author dealt with this dilemma here. The constant agonizing Eli felt gave the text a tension and a hint of despair. Already it has been established in book one how the pride feels for same-sex relationships, but the addition of a human in the mix makes things even more complicated, putting Eli, and Silas by proxy, in a hard and a rock place. When Eli goes to find Shayne outside the Estate, in order to explore his consuming emotions, things become dangerous. As Ariel does not lack for people with grudges and harboring hatred toward their new leader and his friends.
The action that takes place was lovely for me. I just loved the animalistic reaction even as I’d have preferred that “all hell breaking loose” to be a bit more, a bit grander. But even as fast as the villains went down – and at this point I need to highlight the fact that the villains are a bit overdramatic and mad as hell – what made the story a bit awkward was the final intimate scene between Eli and Shayne. The dialogues between them was, how should I this, off-putting, killing the mood, and after paragraphs of talking about the logistics of how and why, the act itself was fast, furious, and unfulfilling. While all other intimate scenes had this very good dose of sensual in them and eroticism was a constant, the final one, where fireworks should be exploding, well it failed. I also have that little thing with the phrase “like it?” It is certainly turning in a deal breaker for me.
Nonetheless, this book was still good and gave a bit more light in the Ariel Estates Pride, albeit we need more lore, but it was a very nice and gripping story, complimenting the first book in the series wonderfully.
Recommended!