Review: humourous fun and sexy dragonshifters
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 25, 2013
Luck of the Dragon. Susanna Scott.ARC provided by publisher.Romance and shape-shifters :) always a good hook for me, but dragons are more unusual than the normal wolves we see, so this book sounded interesting. I've read a couple now with Dragon shifters, and they all seem to have the dragons with a fascination for jewels and sparkly stuff - me too, maybe I'm really a dragon in another life??Anyway, Luciana (Lucy) is a great character, loves her twin brother and as its just them left in the family, tries hard to keep him on the straight. Still, he's a gambler and like most of them the thrill of the big win is too hard to resist. This time its got him involved with a mob enforcer and he's dragged Lucy in too - they need her help as a professional gemmologist to get them access to the jewels.Lucy is a great character, intelligent, loving and with a cracking sense of snark. She has some great lines and came across as a really genuine, likeable person. Someone I'd love as a friend as so I cared about what happened to her. The brother, Joey, was a typical jerk gambler, thinking only of himself and the Big Win....not the danger he was placing Lucy in. Lucy needs to get to  casino owner Alec, but doesn't know he's a dragon (the King actually) so he has a bit more awareness of what's going on that she realises. He's attracted to her right from the start, and as he's sex on legs she can't help feeling drawn to him. He's not the arrogant, superior type you'd expect, but a strong and fair man, and he wants to know what's going on with Lucy. So he lures her in gently and then the fun starts.The coming jewel theft is a fairly simple plot and the story centres around that, the dragon mating ceremony, and Alec and Lucy's attraction to each other. It covers a short period and being a short book that works well. Sometimes when short novels try to cover too long timespan the details and personalities get lost, but here they're well fleshed out and draw the reader into the story nicely.I did work out the connections fairly quickly but I think that's inevitable in a short novel as there isn't the space to write in lots of red-herring type scenes. It was fine though and didn't spoil my enjoyment of the story.Overall its an enjoyable novel, with people I can empathise with and felt I understood them.  I did feel for Lucy when Alec caught her out, but it wasn't quite enough emotion engendered from me to make it a higher rating. I need more angst! Its well written and edited, as you'd expect and the characters felt real. Its a sweet, gentle romance rather than a sexy, breathtaking, erotic ride but for people who prefer that sort of book its perfect. It delivers exactly what it says.Its priced at 2.36 for 161 pages so its still within my personal VFM scale but at the upper end. Of course if this type of romance is what you love and will re read that's adds value but for me its a bit too sweet and light, good for a quick easy on the mind read, but not one for the keepers file.Stars: Difficult, this part is so subjective when we all want different things so this is just my personal rating. I did enjoy this book, but prefer something a bit deeper for a high star, but its definitely better than a 3 star OK read. Hmnn...Four stars it is.