Review: A rating....
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 9, 2012
My Review:This book takes a completely different take on the shapeshifter world and I liked it...after I grasped the intricacies of it. In Jill James shapeshifter world, the shapeshifters have complete control over their appearance. They can control whether they are male or female, can change their proportions, and can shift to look like other people. Each shapeshifter has a natural male and female form although one of those is always their dominant form...the one that they are most at ease in. The two forms have different personalities though...i.e. if the female form is more happy-go-lucky, the male version will be more straight-laced. The two sides are a kind of yin/yang of an entire person. It's a really interesting premise and one that I wouldn't think could work for a romance novel, but it really does! I'm really impressed with this book.The premise is that someone is killing shapeshifters by infecting them with a horrible disease. It's a really gruesome horrible way to die as the disease makes them shift faster than their body can accommodate until their body literally gives way. So far, the disease has been centralized on the two coasts and there is a task force on the West Coast trying to track it down. But in their investigations, the task force has taken a hard hit of its personnel, so Nikki has come in from Missouri to help out. She's paired up with Sean and they don't mesh well at first. Nikki has a laid-back personality...always cracking jokes. Sean is at his limit with the stress of watching his friends die these gruesome deaths.As they work together, these two start to develop a deep respect for each other as well as an attraction. But when they act on that attraction, well then things just become a WHOLE LOT more complicated. From that point on in this book, I could not put it down. It's a great suspense book because you never know what's going to happen around the next corner. I liked the intricacies that developed from the whole male/female side of shapeshifters. When Nikki couldn't deal anymore with Sean, then Nick showed up. He's a much more restrained, tough-guy version of Nikki and I liked him too, but my heart hurt for Nikki that this was the only way she could deal with Sean. And I hurt for Sean because that's how Nikki chose to deal with him. Lots of great emotion here.There's a lot to this world that is unknown even within the population. There aren't that many shapeshifters in the world and they are trying to save their civilization. Issues of human/shapeshifting matings appear along with the bigotry of that. There's also bigotry between humans and shapeshifters....on both sides. It was a great book that offered both viewpoints. There's a lot of emotion to the book...both from the trauma of the disease and with simple life issues. It's an extremely well-rounded read and I highly recommend it!I received a complementary copy of this book in return for an honest review.