Review: Shifting Pride
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 24, 2013
This was a pretty fun YA read.  The mystery throughout the beginning was kind of creepy and unnerving in some ways, and would be tough to take for a sixteen year old still struggling without her father.  The mystery felt a little drawn out when parts of it were a little predictable, but it didn't detract from the story.It took me a bit to get a read on Xavian, but never really felt he'd be a bad guy, so I occasionally wanted to knock a little sense into Nickie for being so harsh and overreacting with him so much.  Then again, it was kind of funny to see her so flustered around him.  When some of the little changes start happening, it's nice to see that it affected her in everyday things and people took notice.  I also appreciated that the names were a little different than I'm used to seeing.  Sometimes it's the small things that stand out.The ending felt like kind of a blur - it happened pretty quickly - and I feel like I now have more questions than I did before, particularly when it comes to how things were handled after the final conflict.  There were some dark moments, mainly when Nickie is captured and Derek wants to force her to be his mate...at sixteen.  Thankfully there's nothing graphic.  The only remotely graphic scenes are the fight scenes.  I love that we see plenty of the characters in cat form, and that's how most of the fighting occurs.Overall it was a good, well balanced story.  The chemistry between Nickie and Xavian is strong, the mystery is cryptic, and the action is exciting.**I received a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.**