Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: A Bear Walks Into a Bar
AUTHOR: Eden Winters
PUBLISHER: Rocky Ridge Books
LENGTH: 181 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 16, 2016
BLURB:
It takes one strong alpha with a tight grip to keep a mountain full of shifters under control. Sawyer Ballantine’s contending with an uppity wolf leader and a herd of shifter elk bound and determined to take over. He might be the lone bear on the mountain, but he’s not going to allow another four shifters to just move in, especially not when they whiff of power. They’ll either be his in all ways, or they’ll be gone.
Dillon, Jerry, Kevin, and Brad have no one but each other since their groups kicked them out. The young bear, wolves, and fox make a merry ménage, pooling their meager skills and serving beer. They’ve stumbled into more than they understand, caught in the dispute between the Urso of Ballantine Mountain and the elk. But winter’s setting in, and they don’t know how to keep Dillon safe for hibernation.
And then a bear walks into their bar.
REVIEW:
Oh geez. I don’t even know what to do with this book…. The plot is so vague it’s hard to rate and review it!
What I got out of this book, as far as an actual plot goes, is that Sawyer, a bear shifter, is all alone on a mountain, trying to keep a mess of various shifter groups from killing each other. His bear family, or sleuth, were wiped out by a pack of wolf shifters, he took out the ones that did it and hired the alpha to work for his company. I think? So there are four shifters of some sort that have recently moved to his mountain and he needs to go check them out and decide if he wants to assimilate them or run them off. This has to be done before Sawyer goes in to hibernation mode for the next several months. Basically sleeping, eating, and either fucking, if he has someone hibernating with him, or masturbating if he doesn’t. So he leaves his company in the hands of his alpha wolf shifter and heads off to visit the bar the other shifters seem to be using. Where he meets Dillon the bear, Brad the fox, and Jerry and Kevin who are both wolves. Turns out they own the bar. Three of them leave, Dillon staying behind to close the bar, and fuck Sawyer, who he thinks is just a hot man. They fuck, go back to the house the men share, and fuck, fuck, fuck.
Basically it’s Sawyer trying to unite a random group of shifters, not just the four new guys, but a bunch of elk, the wolves, some foxes, and bunch of other various shifters, by sex. Lots of sex. He also takes on the four new comers, accepting them in to his “family”. But that’s it for the plot. What this really is, is a fuck-fest of epic proportions. There is massive amounts of shifter sex, swapping partners, leaking holes, poly-sex, no romance, no commitment, only the occasional bit of emotion, very little clean up, and at the very end some actually mate bonding. I actually stopped to check the word count on the word “fuck”, it shows up in several formats 307 times in a 181 page book. That’s pretty impressive! There are some couples that do form a bond, Sawyer and Dillon being the main pair, and Dillon’s buddies find some one to bond with as well. So I guess there is some emotional connection there, but they all just keep fucking each other regardless of the bonding.
So I don’t really know how to rate this book. I couldn’t even read some of the sex scenes, it was just way too much and way over the top. I got bored and skimmed through them, looking for some drama, some plot, something other than sex. I really do like reading the sex scenes normally, I love me some erotica, but this was just too much. What plot there was I liked, I think, the basic concept anyway. I love shifter stories, and love ones with multiple species of shifters. I liked the idea of trying to bring this big random group together as a united pack. I got it, I really did, but there was just too much fucking. Wow. I can’t even believe I’m saying that.
If you like your books with 80% sex to 20% plot you may well love this book. I prefer a more balanced book. I didn’t hate this one, but I just can’t give it a high rating. Every time I though there would be a bit of actual plot development, or an emotional scene, two pages later there was fucking. I mean, it was fun, it had some quirky characters, I liked the guys in it, and it had some sweet moments, I certainly didn’t hate it. But if I hadn’t been reading it for review, I would have gotten bored and stopped by 20% or so.
Not a bad book if you like massive amounts of totally unrealistic sex, if you do like that, more power to you, I say buy this book and go for it. If you want some plot, well…. maybe skip this one!
RATING:
BUY LINKS:
Thank you for the review. I was very disappointed in this book too. There was no substance to it for me. I love her Diversion series.