Review: Not Quite Up to Par
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 11, 2012
When the Bear Shifter Sheriff and the human male that he was attracted to were first mentioned in the first book of this series, I was curious as to whether Kell would do their story. I waited over a year and then nothing. So I finally gave up and moved on to other things. Since then I've read several other stories in the Man-man love, shifter romance genre. And there is a certain level of quality that I appreciate in a story,and this one didn't quite make it. I liked the plot of how James turned out to be sick, and what really turned out to be wrong with him. That was twist that I didn't expect, until I read the sample of the book. The problem for me, wasn't in the premise of the plot, because that I liked in general. It was the execution on the plot. It seemed to quick for me, which is the problem I had with one of the two other stories, by Kell that I really liked.I thought the story was going along pretty well until it got to James being captured, then the quality of the writing started to fall a part for me. I didn't like how the story didn't say who opened the prison doors in the facility. The whole escaped seemed a little to easy, so easy even the characters in the story thought so. But me and the characters kept expecting something to stop them, easily and conveniently nothing did. It's just that given how Melinda made such a big show of capturing James and also captured Lou easily, by having him tranquilized, because she expected that he would just let her and her henchmen, just live with James, but then after she gets them both back to her facility, she leaves the facility and doesn't do a better job than she did, to make sure they didn't escape. And none of the guards had tranqs or anything that could stop a shifter, seriously. How had she kept the other shifters as captors, with security measures that lax. It just didn't seem that the escape should have been that easy, after how the captor, Melinda had went on about how she'd, wanted so long to capture James for study, but couldn't cause she was dating Andrew, James' dad, but that she had the chance, since Andrew and she had broke up she so wasn't going to let this opportunity pass. I thought the escape was poorly written, in summary, I guess that is what I'm getting at.And then their was the issue of the coyote shifter that escaped the PAW facility where James had been held, that was the sister of Dennis. I was under the impression that Dennis was a lion, since he was introduced as a member of the lion pride, and unlike, Talan's mate, Adrian, who was frequently referred to as a wolf, just in case the audience, hadn't read from Pack to Pride and didn't know that Adrian was a wolf and not a lion, it never said that Dennis wasn't a lion. And if Dennis was a lion, how was his sister a coyote? That was rather confusing to me, and was not explained as to whether Dennis' and/or his sister were lions or coyotes or what. And that became a distraction, since finding his sister was made a significant detail of the plot. Then in the end, the sister was not found.Then given how angry and hurt James was by his father, I thought their relationship, was emotionally resolved a little to quickly and neatly, especially considered was happened to James when he was in the process of escaping the PAW facility and what it took, to make him get over the condition he got stuck in.It seemed like the story had a good flow, with events building rather naturally, not to slow and not to fast for about the first half, up until James and Lou were captured by Melinda. Then when James woke up, it's like the rest of the story was written like it was a race to the finish line and thus, seemed rushed to me, not taking the time to adequately resolve the things that it did resolve, like James and Andrew and James and Lou, his condition with his sickness and what was really his problem. Then it left other things unresolved completely like: Dennis' sister, how was she a coyote if he was a lion, was he even a lion himself, and did Andrew talk to James about going ahead with having KC search for his mother, Andrew's wife, and if he talked to James about it, what did James say?I don't like it when authors put things in the story and make it a significant point, but then leave it unresolved without letting it be known if they are going to answer these questions in a sequel or not. Actually, I just don't like cliff-hangers and unresolved questions at all. I've read only about 7 of her stories, this being the 7th, and I've only really liked two. And one of the two I did really like, I thought was too short, as I said before. Still, in conclusion, not one of her best, in my opinion. And having read several of this genre by other authors, Kell is not one of my favorites. I don't think she's bad or really good, I think she's okay.