When a female Shifter comes to town seeking refuge, Feline Shifter Sean Morrissey claims the new arrival and finds a beautiful woman who looks him straight in the eye without fear, stirring the mating frenzy within him.
To relocate to a new Shiftertown, half-Fae, half-Shifter Andrea Gray must accept a new mate. But Andrea’s intense attraction to Sean is something she never expected-a perilous complication for a woman with a troubled past.
Primal Bonds
by Jennifer Ashley
Series:
Shifters Unbound #2
Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Paranormal Romance
Publisher:
Berkley
Publication Date:
March 1, 2011
This second in the Shifters Unbound series, continues with the story of the shiftertown outside of Austin, Texas. This time around we get Sean’s story. Sean is the brother of Liam, the main male character from the first book, and the leader of shiftertown.
Andrea has moved recently to shiftertown to get away from a mating with the son of a shiftertown Alpha from Colorado. She’s working as a server in the main bar in town and is living with her Aunt Glory. Glory lives next door to the Morrisey family and is still seeing Sean and Liams father. In order to move there and get away from the other mating, Andrea has had to accept Sean’s sight unseen mating claim request. But that doesn’t mean she has to go through with it, and others can still bring a claim to her, until she accepts Sean and mates with him.
Andrea as a character in a shiftertwon was pretty different. That’s because she is half fae and half wolf. Because of this she has been bullied, and shunned most of her life, and she never met her fae father. Sean is a big cat and the Guardian for the shiftertown; it’s his job to use a special sword to send shifters to their reward after they have died. It’s a big responsibility and it’s taken it’s toll on Sean’s life. Andrea’s fae gift is healing-so the two of them together is pretty perfect because even she can’t heal everyone.
The world building in this series is pretty outstanding. In this world, human’s know about shifters and have relegated them to small, and what human’s believe are poor towns. Each shifter has to wear a fae-made collar that reacts and shocks the shifter if aggression is felt by the shifter. What the human community doesn’t suspect is that some shifters are experimenting with taking the collars off-something that normally would cause the shifter to to go crazy and then die from.
In addition to the collar exploration, this time around humans are shooting up shiftertown and wreaking havoc-and using unhappy shifters to help. It’s up to Sean and Liam to find the ones that are causing the problems and the shifters that are helping them. Over and above this, it is an extremely good romance.
As with the previous book, I enjoyed the shifters, the relationships in pack or pride life, and the whole touchy feelie thing the shifters have going on. They certainly seem to care about each other more than the human’s do. Just one more aspect of the excellent world building and writing of this author.
What’s not to like? I can’t think of a thing!
I would recommend this book to all adult paranormal romance/urban fantasy readers.
The review copy of Primal Bonds was purchased by the reviewer.
ABOUT JENNIFER ASHLEY
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Jennifer Ashley writes historical and paranormal romance as Jennifer Ashley; paranormal romance and urban fantasy as Allyson James; and mysteries as Ashley Gardner. Jennifer’s novels have won RWA’s RITA and RT Reviewer’s Choice awards among others.
For information on all her novels visit http://www.jennifersromances.com. Also see http://www.gardnermysteries.com (Ashley Gardner) and http://www.allysonjames.com (Allyson James) for her other works.
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