Review: Animal Instincts by Patricia Rosemoor
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 13, 2014
After reading the synopsis for Animal Instincts I was eager to dive in. Patricia Rosemoor has written a shifter story, calling them the Kindred, with a history differing from any I've heard before. In many ways her explanation of how shifters came to be was more more believable than others I've read.The story is about a powerful Kindred family whose secret place in the community has been discovered due to fights-to-the-death between shifters being organized by someone within their Company. Because the bodies of the shifters that lose are being left behind (and have transformed back to their human state) and found, a homicide investigation by the police began. Shade Cross is the detective in charge of the investigation. His twin sister Skye Cross, an animal rescuer also becomes involved. Shade and his sister Skye are able to read each others thoughts over a psychic connection.Luc Lazare, the half-human son of the Boss and Security Director for The Company also becomes directly involved in investigating who is responsible for these fights when his close childhood friend is forced to fight to her death. Things become even more entangled when he realizes Shade and his sister, Nuala, are having a relationship. Especially since he and Skye seem to also have a strong "animal" attraction difficult for either of them to ignore.To avoid detection, and to feed his hate for Luc, the fights organizer decides to kill off the people close to him. His friend Jez is first. When he goes after Luc's mother, Slade is shot and killed protecting her. This instills Skye with even more motivation to find out who the responsible party is and solve her brother's murder with the help of Slade's partner, Ethan.This storyline really was fascinating and had so much potential, but for me it was missing too much and had too much all at the same time. The writing was inconsistent and felt like it was all over the place making it difficult to stay interested. So much was brought into play for world-building, but then never really explained. Same with characters, I felt like very few were developed enough that I could understand the reasons for their actions. However, I was able to guess who the bad guy was the first time he was brought into the story and the same went for his accomplice. I was disappointed in the end to find out I was right.The other large part of the story was the attraction between Skye and Luc. I knew it was there, kept being told it was there, but never really felt the emotion of it. Now the love Nuala and Shade felt for each other was a different story. It was tangible and heartbreaking. Very well written and I loved their part of the ending. Eventually, Luc and Skye are able to work things out as well even though she is a Progeny of The Powers and he has Kindred blood.I had high hopes as I began this book and liked many parts about it, but it just didn't click for me. I rate it with three stars.~Complimentary copy received from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review.