Review: Rules need to be broken!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 6, 2013
What's more important to you: career or love?  That's pretty much the summary of the conflict between the hero and heroine in Miranda's Mate.  In The Company, everyone is a fierce and strong agent, able to risk their life for good, and yet, when it comes to love, there's no defense training for how not to get hurt.  Oh sure, you can make rules for yourselves, like don't get involved with a co-worker, but as our hero and heroine discover: rules need to be broken.I liked how we jump right into the action as Miranda is recovering from a botched mission and Garen shows up to help her.  We don't have to wait to long to find out what happened in the mission, and it was nicely given so it wasn't an infodump.  There are a few very suspenseful scenes where fighting is involved that makes you want to keep turning the pages to see if our hero and heroine will survive.  Sexual tension is thick in this novel and word choice, actions, and descriptors makes it more on the raunchy side even though the actual love-making scenes are fairly short.  If this was on TV, it would most definitely be on HBO but not so far as Skinimax!I liked how strong Miranda is in both sass and abilities, but I found it hard to relate to her.  I like how Garen loves Miranda, but I didn't like his reasoning for why they couldn't be together.  I did enjoy how they were able to resolve their issues at the end, and I especially like how Lars played a huge part in the end.  I'm eager to learn more about him and his mythology (and the woman he ends up with)!Speaking of mythology, shifters and Lycans are known and are hunted down, so being one or the other is dangerous, which is why they try to keep their identities secret.  Lycans can use magic, which I thought was a very fun addition.  I wished Ms. Gimpel could have expanded more on the mythology, because the parts she did write about were interesting.All in all, this was a good first book of a new series!  I liked the friendship between Lars and Garen so I'd love to learn more about Lars' story!  I'd recommend this to those who like a spicy paranormal romance with an air of danger and give it a 3 out of 5.(Originally posted on my blog; I received a review copy in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.)