Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Kevin’s Alpha

SERIES:  A Wizard’s Touch #2

AUTHOR:  Amber Kell

PUBLISHER:  Totally Bound

LENGTH:  91 pages

BLURB: When the heart is involved, bravery can have more power than the strongest magic.

When James Sparks, the alpha of the local werewolf pack, declares Kevin Santhill as his mate, the free-wheeling wizard panics. He didn’t plan on settling down—not now, not ever. It doesn’t matter that James is the sexiest thing he’d ever seen or that his heart flips whenever he sees the sexy wolf shifter, he plans to stick by his guns and stay independent.

However, when his best friend Jaynell goes missing, he has to partner with James to help find his friend. And if Kevin can’t find the confidence to dredge up his magic and control his avatar, Jay could be lost forever.

REVIEW:  

After a life under his father’s thumb, Kevin has no intentions of putting himself under anyone’s authority ever again.  He is going to go to school, learn how to heal using his magic, and ignore every one of his father’s attempts to make him some type of fancy, power-hungry politician.  All that is going great till one of his friends pulls him into the path of Alpha James Sparks.  A man who is commanding, and hot, and annoyingly insistent that Kevin is his mate.  And once Kevin figures out how to stop falling in bed with the man, he is going to totally set him straight on how not-mated they are going to be.  Because he really has no desire–nope, none at all–to be bound to the tricky, undeniably sexy, Alpha wolf.

Then a friend goes missing, and it turns out that someone has been using the local magic population at their own little bundle of energizer batteries.  With several people already dead, and another missing, no one is sure who is doing the abducting, but everyone is pointing fingers.  Kevin is not an all-powerful, super-special wizard like his friend Jaynell, but he is going to do everything in his power to help stop the killings.  He just has to figure out how to control his avatar, who is going after the local wizarding population, and why he can’t seem to leave the security and love offered by one highly annoying wolf.

Kevin’s Alpha is the second book in the Wizard’s Touch series, and while it may be possible to read it as a stand-alone, I really would recommend picking up the first book in the series before you do.  A lot of the stuff that Jaynell went through in book one, is going to have repercussions in book two, so it will make more sense, and probably be more enjoyable is you go back and read Jaynell’s Wolf before starting this one.

There are some points in this book that I really enjoyed more than in book one.  Mainly the fact that Kevin isn’t a super-powerful wizard like Jaynell.  While I like the idea of all that power, I find I enjoy stories more with characters that are just ordinary–who then have to fight and stretch themselves to do what seems impossible.  With Jaynell you never really feared anyone was going to be able to take him out, he was just too powerful, but Kevin doesn’t have all that power at his disposal.  He’s not going to be able to pull a rabbit out of his hat (although, I guess he might be able to actually do that, though not sure it would do him any good unless it was to feed Gideon) so he is going to have to rely on his friends, his mate, and his tenuous grasp on his avatar.

I also liked how James was willing to let Kevin make up his mind about whether or not he wanted to be his mate.  Not that James wasn’t totally sure he could bring Kevin around to agreeing.  But he seemed to know that commanding him to be his mate would only lead to Kevin taking the first magical carpet out of Dodge.  Even not knowing all that much about his past, James was smart enough to know just what buttons to avoid.  And for all his Alpha-ness outside the bedroom, he also knows how to bend to his mate’s desires, which was nice for a change.  Not saying he wasn’t totally Topping from the Bottom, but he also knew how to let go of control, sometimes, and actually enjoy it.

I did have some major issues with the whole kidnapping plot, though. The evil guy was just too damn obvious, and when the final confrontation happened he was throwing clichés around left and right.  He even cackled maniacally.  That is not scary, at all. It is just a bit annoying and a tad hilarious (and not in a good way).  If the whole point was to make us fear for everyone’s lives, and thereby raise the tension to its peak…yeah, not so much.  Plus it really felt like he took a 180 degree personality turn from book one.  I don’t remember him acting like this, even a little, and it seemed really out of left field.

I liked the romance, and the bit of mystery, but some parts of this book just didn’t gel with me.  Some of the twists seemed a tad bit contrived, and it made the overall plot seem a little thin.  There were some things I really liked though, and I did enjoy reading about Kevin and James.  Wouldn’t mind learning more about the triplets either.  This story was short and mostly entertaining, so I don’t regret reading it, but I do wish it didn’t seem so fake in some aspects.  Will probably end up reading any future books, though, because I did like these last two stories.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Totally Bound  ::  Amazon  ::  ARe