Review: Not quite as good as I'd hoped for... I still give the whole series a 4 star grade
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2011
My rating for the story is in the context of it's genre, namely 'paranormal romance'-- it's a story that is expected to be a romance at heart, with a happily-ever-after in a world with paranormal elements.I have read the previous stories in the series and I have enjoyed the basic premise--a coyote shapeshifting community as the setting, with plenty of hot steam and devoted, monogamous pairs (at least once they find out they are mates!).  The background for the world-view is touched upon in enough detail to understand it without trying to give a hard-science type explanation.  Part of the story is just accepting it as is and getting on with the reading.The other entries in the series are:Coyote HomeCoyote WildandCoyote Run<<---this one is a prequel to Coyote Home, setting some of the history for the first book.I liked the first two reads, and the third one which was not quite a stand alone as it was more like a slice-of-life (under 500 Kindle locations) and benefited from the knowledge of subsequent events.I had hoped Coyote Whispers would be more like the first two in terms of it's ability to function as a stand alone, but it unfortunately this was just not the case.  It has been long enough since Coyote Wild that several details were a little more difficult to recall and the story was written as though the memory was completely fresh.  I'm sure this could have been rectified by re-reading the others, but end result left me feeling like there were big holes in the story line.I also felt as though the villain was reduced to being no more than a paper cut-out bad guy.  Again, referencing events of the prior stories more perhaps would have helped, but at no point did you ever get in the bad guy's head or have more than a passing idea as to why he chose to do the things he did and to whom.Perhaps reading these sequentially/immediately together would have helped but time has passed between the publications and it was just a bit much to pull back the details of the rest of the series, if in fact the details to help this story were really there.  I did read the first two together, and like I said I enjoyed them and don't remember thinking there were plotting issues.In terms of who the intended audience is, well this is DEFINITELY a book geared towards an audience looking for explicit nookie between a man/woman without kink.  It is a lot of nookie--to the point where at times I was feeling like 'please just get on with the story' only the story didn't quite get on.  I think adding about 25% more story to complete the details would have made this a 4.5 star read.I do plan to read whatever title comes next...and I recommend the series in total if you are looking for the 'paranormal porn' type read.  I would read them in close time proximity however, and the next book I will go back and re-read everything first (the first three will add up to a regular length novel in terms of Kindle locations and this one is the longest at 3272 locations).JTG