Review: A Very Cougar Christmas
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 6, 2010
4-1/2 StarsI received TANGLED TINSEL as part of the anthologyWinter Wishes. And I'll admit it, I wanted  WINTER WISHES solely for this story by Vivian Arend. I've been a fan of her "Granite Lake Wolves Series" (Wolf Signs: Granite Lake Wolves, Book 1) as well as several of her contemporary romances.  I didn't realize that I could get it by itself. But no worries, I enjoyed another story from a new author in the anthology.Undercover Cop El seduces cougar shifter Kyle and lures him to her room where she kidnaps him as part of an operation. She's been assigned to keep him hidden and secure until January court date. To keep him out of sight, she decides to take him to her sleepy hometown where nothing ever happens. Soon, Kyle brings out the cougar in El she's been trying to suppress in an attempt to fit into the human world and distance herself from things in the shifter world she's never liked.As I said before, I've followed Vivian Arend's Granite Lake Wolf Series and have read several of her other stories. I think I liked this story better than her wolf series--it may be because "werewolves" are so overdone that it's nice to have a different kind of shifter, or it may be because I really liked El and Kyle as well as the secondary characters.  The POV shifts between El and Kyle, but they never rehashed what just happened. If we saw a scene from El's POV we didn't have to suffer from seeing it again from Kyle's. The pacing was great, moving events along. I loved the character growth and how they both pushed each other to grow in unexpected ways.  I was disappointed by the ending, in that the case both Kyle and El were working on came to nothing and was all rather convoluted: it just seemed tacked on.  I am hopeful that we might see more from this world as Kyle has brothers and El has a TON of siblings. *crosses fingers*Word of caution: I would classify this story as erotica. Right off the bat, El flashes some bare skin at Kyle who then hunts her down to a changing room in a lingerie shop where they give the shop girls something to talk about. There is lots of sex, detailed and explicit. Normally, that's not my thing, but Ms. Arend always put so much life into her characters and heat into her story that I just love it.(109 pages)