Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: The Last Wolf
SERIES: Sapphire Ranch Wolves #1
AUTHOR: Sue Brown
PUBLISHER: Love Lane Books
LENGTH: 162 pages
BLURB:
The only good predator is a dead one, as far as Joe Lowther is concerned.
That is until the day he shoots a wolf, only to watch the animal turn into a naked Callum Pope. Cal is being hunted by a group of humans who eradicate shifter packs for sport.
Joe makes a decision to help Cal and discovers a deeper connection with the young shifter. One which he’d like to explore. If they live that long.
REVIEW:
Joe Lowther is a professor, taking time off from work to go take care of his family sheep ranch in Texas. His father is hospitalized, being treated for cancer, and may not make it home again. He sees a wolf around the property, and sets out to kill it one night. He takes his shot, only to discover he has shot a werewolf. Cal, the werewolf, is on the run from hunters who have taken out part or all of his pack. His Alpha/father told him to run, and run Cal has done. He’s scared and hungry, and ends up on the wrong end of Joe’s gun. Joe takes the wounded kid, or so he appears, in to his home and eventually in to his life and heart. It takes everything Joe has, including some friends, to protect Cal, but he will do it or die trying.
It has the potential to be a decent plot, and Sue has created an interesting world, with good characters. Unfortunately it just doesn’t all come together. I realize this will sound crazy, considering it’s a story about shifters, but it was not believable for me at all. Even in the paranormal romance genre, I like some realism, or at least believability in a story. Joe is way to fast to accept that Cal is a werewolf. The bad guys show up way too soon, with no explanation about how they found Cal. I’m not a fan of insta-love, and tolerate “fated mates” if it works, but this is just too rushed. It’s Joe, the human, that tells Cal, the werewolf that they must be mates, because he can hear Cal in his head. But Joe doesn’t even know werewolves exist before he shot one! It’s all too easy some how. The bad guys arrive too easy, Joe and Cal fall in love too easy, and they get help too easy. The other thing that bothered me was that this is a sheep ranch, but has no sheep. And no one else works there. Also Joe complains about his back hurting, Cal says he can help but never does. Oh and they stop to have sex in the middle of this big mess. They go in a room certainly, but the house if full of security guards, and it felt odd to me. The big action sequence at the end seemed totally unrealistic to me, and somewhat physically impossible. I just didn’t buy any of it. I liked Joe and Cal, and some of the other characters, I liked the concept of the plot and the world with packs of shifters being hunted, but it didn’t come together as it could have.
I feel like I’ve just ripped apart this book, and I feel bad about that. I generally like Sue Brown’s books, and I love paranormal romance stories, so it’s not that. I didn’t hate this one, I liked it ok on the surface, but the details didn’t work for me once I started thinking about it or looking too deeply.
RATING: 
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