Title: Protecting His Pride
Series: Supernatural Mates, #7
Author: Amber Kell
Genre: Paranormal/ Shifters
Length: Novella
Publisher: Total E-Bound (December 1st, 2013)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥2.5 Hearts
Reviewer: Thommie
Blurb: When a bleeding lion shifter collapses in the alley outside his restaurant, Garret Halcon discovers the one thing missing in his life was love.
Garret Halcon finds a lion shifter bleeding behind the alley of his restaurant. Unusually attached to a complete stranger, he follows him to the hospital.
When Cesar runs into the problem of too many alphas in one town, he has to prove to Talan that he can be a successful member of the pride without being a problem.
Will Cesar be able to complete a task set for him by the lion alpha or will he die for the sake of his pride?
Product Link: http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=2268
Review: A lion shifter and a hawk shifter are most exciting as an idea, more than enticing and certainly will draw me to read a book. However, I’m now resigned to the fact that when a book with so many elements has such a short length will never be enough for me.
Cesar has been locked away in a lab and tortured. When his value comes to an end he’s taken away to be disposed, but he manages to escape and return for the other lions. A bit too late though as they are already on the way out from the lab, however Cesar has a last stand off with one of the guards leaving him with a bullet in his body and unable to shift. Injured he makes his way in a daze not knowing where he’s heading and lands outside Garret’s restaurant, where he collapses.
When Garret finds him after his shift, it’s clear that he’s found his mate and the timing couldn’t be better. First because his mate needs him and second because Garret has been itchy for a while now for intimacy.
However, troubles never seem to end as the area’s pride’s Alpha can’t tolerate another Alpha in his territory and Cesar will have to work his way around into finding a solution and stay by his mate’s side.
So much information was dumped all at once in this book. Hawk shifter, I’d love to read more about them, the how’s and the why’s and their lore, but that was lacking. The lab situation was hazily explained and the entire events that led Cesar to his freedom were clinically described losing all the potential intensity. Cesar’s issues with being an Alpha and feeling inadequate for the role were overcome as if a magic spell was cast and Cesar’s and Garret’s relationship was merely stated. The chemistry of the mates, their intensity, their passion, and need were too weak to be felt. The pace was too fast for all things to be absorbed and that made me not really get attached to the characters. In addition, the mating bond/claim when it happened was one-sided with our Alpha lion never making his claim and left me wanting. The end when it came was this huge hang up, so abrupt that I had to check twice that this book was over.
Bottom end, while the idea behind the story is quite enticing, the story itself was less than I expected and didn’t manage to take me with it in that magic space where I would have lived in the story instead of simply reading it detached and wondering.