MIDNIGHT WOLF (Shifters Unbound #11) by Jennifer Ashley-Review and Giveaway
MIDNIGHT WOLF
Shifters Unbound #11
by Jennifer Ashley
Release Date: April 24, 2018
Genre: adult, contemporary, paranormal, shifter, romance
Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / B&N / KOBO / Chapters Indigo / Google Play
ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 24, 2018
Angus Murray, bouncer for a New Orleans Shifter bar, is sent to round up an elusive, Collar-less Shifter woman, Tamsin Calloway, who is causing trouble for Shifter Bureau, and possesses information they want. If Angus refuses, he risks losing his cub. He finds Tamsin but she’s slippery and not about to be rounded up quietly.
In fact, quiet is nothing Tamsin will ever be. She leads Angus on a wild chase, but he’s determined to bring her in to save his son.
Can Tamsin convince Angus she’s worth helping before she’s locked away by Shifter Bureau, Collared, or perhaps killed?
••••••••
REVIEW: MIDNIGHT WOLF is the eleventh full-length novel in Jennifer Ashley’s contemporary, adult SHIFTERS UNBOUND paranormal/ fantasy romance series. This is lupine shifter/tracker Angus Murray, and Tamsin Calloway’s story line. MIDNIGHT WOLF can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but for cohesion and backstory I recommend reading the series in order as there is a continuing arc focusing on the impending war with the Fae.
SOME BACKGROUND: Thousands of years in the past, the Fae created the shifters-a cross between beast and man-and in the ensuing time the Fae lost control and power over the battle creatures they had created for war. Approximately twenty years ago shifters were exposed to the human population. Out of fear, discrimination and specieism, the shifters were collared with Fae magic in the belief that it would control aggression; then they were forced into segregated communities known as Shiftertowns. There are several Shiftertowns located throughout America where shifters live in a relative but strained peace amongst their own kind.
Told from dual third person perspectives (Tamsin and Angus) MIDNIGHT WOLF follows lupine shifter and tracker Angus Murray as he is forced by the Shifter Bureau to track an uncollared shifter of unknown origin. Enter Tamsin Calloway, a rogue, female shifter, and the woman with whom Angus will fall in love. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between Tamsin and Angus as our couple tries to stay one step ahead of the Shifter Bureau whose intent is to dissect and destroy our story line heroine.
Angus Murray is a single father, working as a bouncer when threats against his family force our hero to go on the hunt. With his cub in custody Angus has no choice but to do the Bureau’s bidding, as he searches for the rogue female he knows nothing about. Tamsin Calloway has spent most of her life on the run. Collar-less, and without support of any kind, Tamsin finds herself on the Bureau’s most wanted list for a series of crimes but none more so than the information she keeps secreted in her mind. Meeting Angus Murray never felt so right or so wrong including the maternal feelings that arose when she met Angus’s motherless cub.
The relationship between Angus and Tamsin is a forced friendship in order for our heroine to survive. Targeted by the Bureau, and thusly Angus Murray, Tamsin must succumb to her captor or find herself on the receiving end of imprisonment or worse. Falling in love was never on the agenda but a mate bond is claimed by Angus to protect the woman with whom he has fallen in love. The $ex scenes are passionate but limited, without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.
There is a very large ensemble cast of secondary and supporting characters including the return of Tiger and Carly, Ben, Zander and Rae, Dimitri and Jaycee, Dylan and Sean, as well as the introduction of bear shifter and carnival owner Dante, his mate Celene and their daughter Brina, and Angus’s son Ciaran. The requisite evil has many faces including several members of the Shifter Bureau.
The world building continues to focus on the potential war between the shifter and the Fae, but follows the ongoing discrimination of shifters: the laws to collar and control, as well as the segregation and Shiftertowns meant to isolate those deemed different.
MIDNIGHT WOLF is an exciting, detailed story line about trust and betrayal, family and friendship, fated mates and happily ever afters. The premise is thrilling and fascinating; the characters are colorful, energetic and inspiring; the romance is intimate and animated. MIDNIGHT WOLF is a welcome addition to Jennifer Ashley’s Shifters Unbound- a cross-country journey as fated mates stay one step ahead of a potential take down and catastrophic danger to all involved.
Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Shifter Made .5
Pride Mates
Primal Bonds
Bodyguard
Wild Cat
Hard Mated 3.5
Mate Claimed
Perfect Mate 4.5
Lone Wolf 4.6
Tiger Magic
Feral Heat 5.5
Wild Wolf
Bear Attraction 6.5
Mate Bond
Lion Eyes
Bad Wolf 7.5
Wild Things 7.75
White Tiger
Guardian’s Mate
Red Wolf
Copy supplied by Netgalley
Reviewed by Sandy
Excerpt provided by Penguin Random House Publisher
Tamsin Calloway looked younger than in her photo. She had a wave of bright red hair flowing back from a broad forehead, her face narrowing to a somewhat pointed chin. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes from this distance, but her skin was the pale hue of a true redhead, one from the northern climes of Scotland. Angus had seen Fae inside Faerie with hair that color.
She sat at a table that held seven other men, all human. Her cards hung negligently in her hands while she leaned forward with a little smile, as though eager for the next bet. They were playing Texas Hold ’em. The cards showing on the table were two queens, a jack, and a ten. Plenty of money sat in a pile in the middle. No chips, just cash.
As Angus paused, trying to decide on his approach, one of the men at the table glared at Tamsin. “I’ll raise you a hundred.” He shoved in a stack of twenties.
“I’ll see that,” Tamsin said without losing her smile.
Four of the other men groaned and tossed down their cards. “Fold,” they each said, with one saying, “I’m toast.”
Three men and Tamsin left. Two put in their money, leaving it to the man who’d raised the last time. He plucked up two more twenties and a ten and let them drop into the pile. “Another fifty.”
Tamsin shrugged and added her money. Another man threw his cards down in disgust. “I’m out.”
Now it was Tamsin and the other two. One man looked at his cards, the five on the table, and the pot. He sighed and pushed his chair back. “Damn it.”
The remaining man watched Tamsin. He hunched forward, anger in every line of his body. If he didn’t win, things might go bad for Tamsin.
“Call,” the man snarled.
Tamsin laid down her cards. “Two little ladies make four of a kind.”
A string of foul words came out of the man’s mouth. His cards fell from his hand, nowhere near anything to win.
“You cheating bitch!”
Tamsin raked the money to her and rose. Ignoring the raging man and his friends, who were telling him to suck it up, she looked across the room and straight at Angus.
Angus froze in place, doing his best to be just another Shifter looking to relieve boredom in this backwoods casino.
Tamsin wasn’t fooled. The eyes that met Angus’s told him she’d already seen him, recognized him for Shifter, and knew why he was here. Her eyes were a hazel shade, the light over the table showed him, almost golden, the color of whisky. Her faint scent came to him over the stench of humans and smoke—warm, like nutmeg.
Tamsin stuffed double handfuls of cash into her pockets, at the same time moving back from the table on quick feet.
“Gotta go, boys. Thanks for the game.”
Two more strides, a flash of a grin over her shoulder, and she faded into the shadows.
Angus charged across the room after her. A heavy curtain hid the wall she’d run toward, and Angus jerked it back to find a window, wide-open and letting in the fog.
Angus scrambled through the window, jerking his bulk through the tight fit, and landed on the veranda that surrounded the house.
Mists flowed between him and the trees beyond, and there was no sound. Tamsin, her flame hair, and nutmeg scent, had vanished.
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