Title: Primal Desires
Series: Children of Shairobi 01
Author: Lupa Garneau
Genre: Paranormal, Shifter
Length: Novella (91pgs)
Publisher: Lupa Garneau (Self Published) (1st March 2012)
Heat Level: Explicit
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥4Hearts
Reviewer: Pixie
Blurb: Deep in the heart of Redwood National Park, enshrouded by magic, live the Rune Fang, legendary shifters on the brink of extinction.
After a century of vengeance, Nexhan, clan leader of the Rune Fangs returns home to find his people teetering on the edge of extinction. Still plagued by his past and sense of failure, he has closed himself off from even his closest friends. He is desperate to return to the shifter way of life, but doesn’t know how to cope with the death of his family and lover.
Cole is the typical outcast. Clumsy, quiet and angry. After years of disappointing his parents with his inability to master his cougar’s predatory skills, he runs from the pressure to mate a female who he can never love, but he never expected to end up living among the saber-toothed cats. Heck, he didn’t even know they still existed. Embarrassed by his lack of skills, he retreats into himself, quietly nursing his pain.
A chance meeting in the forest leads Cole to accept Nexhan’s help and companionship, but he never imagined he’d trust the male with his deepest secrets. Nexhan vows to himself it’s just sex, but the cougar intrigues him like nothing before. Can he move on and finally lay to rest his trouble past?
Purchase Link: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-primaldesire-738752-142.html
Review: This is the first time that I have bought this authors work, even though she has several books under her belt, all self-published. I am now looking forward to reading her other works. Nexhan returns to his clan after an absence of a hundred years, when he meets Cole. He is happy to have a fling with him, but he knows that as his clan’s numbers have dropped he will have to breed soon. Cole ran from a future he didn’t want, he was sick of being treated differently and being a failure. When he meets Nexhan, he has dreams of a new future, but he has new things to learn about himself and Nexhan’s shell to crack.
I really enjoyed this book. Yeah, there were some incorrect words, but otherwise it was well written. I loved the shifter premise of being shifters whose form was similar to a saber-tooth tiger called the Rune Fang. There is very good background for the entire shifter world and I love the way the world building was done quite early on, although it is continually built upon through-out the book. The way the story is woven is really well done and although you begin to wonder if Nexhan will ever pull his head out of his butt, the characters are all brilliant. Some of the descriptions are just lush. You could picture the forest and the flowers, and the idea of them using runes painted on their bodies to hide in plain sight was brilliant.
The relationship between Cole and Nexhan is very hot. And even though Nexhan wants more, he feels that he has to provide cubs for his clan. Cole fled his clan because he didn’t want to go through that himself, so it is a point of unhappiness for him and Nexhan, especially with the way Nexhan treats him. Cole discovers a lot about himself when he is with the Rune Fangs and it is all completely a shock to him. We get to learn snippets about the other clan members and shifters from other clans as well and I think that future stories will expand on their lives.
This is definitely a must read for those who want a new view on shifters and magic, who love hot sex, a whole new premise on the spiritual natures of the shifters, a great story-line and an eventual happy ever after.